https://newsbusters.org/ en https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/steve-malzberg/2026/10/04/cnn-panelist-rips-network-free-accusatory-kushner-headline-story On Thursday, CNN published a report claiming Jared Kushner's firm's investment in an Israeli company with involvement in Israel's military campaigns could be a conflict of interest. Kushner has called the report "deeply misleading," noting that only the indicting headline is visible to non-paid subscribers, not the full story. On Saturday morning's Table For Five on CNN, the debate over the report got heated between host Abby Phillip and former New York City Councilman Joe Borelli.On Friday, Kushner posted on X arguing that CNN’s own reporting contradicts the headline, "How Jared Kushner’s firm’s investment in an Israeli company could be a major conflict of interest."FoxNews.com reported in a piece linked above, on the CNN hit piece, "Buried behind a paywall, it acknowledges: ‘CNN found no indication that Kushner’s actions as a diplomat directly affected the investments reviewed.'"So basically, there is no real there, there, but it didn't stop CNN from pushing a misleading headline and it didn't stop Phillip from diving right in on the Kushner "grift" spin. PHILLIP: The alleged grift appears to be a family business. We've heard about how rich Donald Trump's sons are getting, which includes government contracts. And now a CNN investigation finds Jared Kushner's private company has the largest stake in an Israeli firm involved in Israel's military campaigns. After describing the "conflict of interest" she turned to Kushner's denial, noting that he called the report "deeply misleading" and added that he said, "He has no role in deciding what that Israeli firm buys or sells, and that his company's investment predates both Trump's reelection and Kushner's return to public service."Phillip soon turned to panelists Geraldo Rivera and former Biden deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh before Borelli weighed in and proceeded to rip the premise of the segment, and appeared to question Philip's honesty. BORELLI: You're saying this is not supposed to be how it works, but I want to point out that this is probably not how media is supposed to work. So we're spending an entire segment debating the premise that Jared Kushner is corrupt, whereas the article that we're discussing right now, the operable line in it, is that CNN did not find that anything Jared Kushner did in his public role has anything to do with these stocks. This is a --PHILLIP: Did I say that?BORELLI: No. But this is the premise. This is the problem --PHILLIP: No, no, no, it's actually not the premise. That's why --BORELLI: Yes it is. The point of this article was to put Jared Kushner's name and the word "conflict" in a headline. PHILLIP: Hold on, Joe. Don't put words in my mouth....Most government officials, all of them, actually, if you work in the government in any capacity, you cannot have that situation. You cannot have ownership in a company that is involved in the thing that you are working on.Borelli continued to set the record straight, and Phillip didn't like it.BORELLI: Just so the audience is clear. Jared Kushner owns a percentage of this company. This company owns --PHILLIP: So, Joe, so, Joe, I'm just saying to you --BORELLI: I think, I think you should be honest about what you're reporting on.PHILLIP: Do you acknowledge that, regardless of whether there it is influencing him or it is not influencing him, it is a situation that is, A, unusual --BORELLI: I'm not answering yes or no questions unless you let me explain the context.PHILLIP: -- and B, it does not apply to anybody in the government, and C --BORELLI: This is a broader -- this is a company. Jared Kushner owns an investment company. The investment company owns a percentage of an Israeli investment company, which owns $250 billion of assets, including thousands of companies that they own shares in.Borelli would soon take a blatant shot at CNN. BORELLI: This is why the President has serious objections to networks that he believes treat him unfairly. We have, we have, we have a premise that Jared Kushner is corrupt, whereas the article itself says that, hey, we have no evidence of Jared Kushner ever actually influencing any of the things were saying he is.PHILLIP: Joe, Joe, again.BORELLI: But we're going to put the headline that Jared is corrupt, put a picture of him, and put it online.The segment continued. What we saw from CNN's free-headline-but-subscriber-only story on Kushner was beyond the pale. What viewers saw from Joe Borelli was someone brave and unafraid to tell it like it is. The question is, how soon will CNN have him back on?  October 4th, 2026 7:43 AM Steve Malzberg 297089 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/10/03/pbs-anchor-tosses-no-evidence-card-trump-and-netanyahu-flydubai Screenshot from Snapstream/PBS Most of the network coverage of the hijacking attempt on a Flydubai plane headed to Israel and loaded with Israelis has cited President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest that the early intelligence suggests a terrorist motive. On Thursday night, PBS News Hour anchor Geoff Bennett broke from that pack and talked to former Clinton and Obama official Juliette Kayyem. She's a "reliable" source...if you're looking for someone who reliably dismisses the conservative assertions about violent political motives. Bennett dissed Trump and Netanyahu as "neither has provided evidence" of an ideological motive: On the PBS News Hour, to discuss the Flydubai hijacking attempt, they turn to former Obama and Biden aide Julliette Kayyem. Anchor Geoff Bennett claims neither Trump nor Netanyahu "has provided evidence" of a terrorist motive. It's not what an official should "responsibly say."… pic.twitter.com/QOunZOg9qf— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 4, 2026 GEOFF BENNETT: So, as you know, there are now competing claims about motive. Israel's prime minister says the co-pilot underwent what he called Islamist radical indoctrination. President Trump has pointed to Iran. Neither has provided evidence. The UAA -- UAE, rather, says it's investigating possible terrorist activity or prior planning. What can we responsibly say, if anything, about the motive at this point?JULIETTE KAYYEM: Right. So and I'm glad you say that about responsibly say. After every crisis, terror incident, disaster, there's a narrative that forms very early that is often pushed for political reasons. I think we should just put those to the side aside right now, that that just happens. There are elections.Kayyem acknowledged that it seems obvious that the “leading theory” would be a co-pilot trying to crash a plane of Israelis in Israel suggests terrorism. “What we don't know and the suspicion or allegations that this is related to a terrorist organization or even Iran is what that radicalization process was like.” It could be self-radicalization, or “If it's state-sponsored terrorism, like Iran, a country that Israel and the United States have started a war against, that is a very different consequence.”But she suggested it could just be “mental-health issues.” That sounds a bit like the CNN expert who suggested it might just be “workplace violence.” PBS wasn't alone. On Friday, NPR Morning Edition co-host Michel Martin turned to Democrat-leading former CNN analyst Philip Mudd, asking him if the political motivations of Trump and Netanyahu are going to cloud the investigation.MARTIN: President Trump was asked about any links between the co-pilot and Iran. And he said, quote, "the answer based on what I'm hearing is yes," unquote. But he did not give any details or proof....So I'm wondering if this is a circumstance or how, like, public interest and political pressure could affect an investigation. And I note that because these are sort of, you know, look, the United States is at war with Iran. Israel certainly has an interest in this. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu has certain political pressures weighing on them. So I wonder, honestly, having been at the center of some of these, whether that would affect an investigation.Mudd agreed, but stuck to intelligence protocols. He didn't go "Full CNN." October 3rd, 2026 11:05 PM Tim Graham 297090 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2026/10/03/politico-publishes-trump-obsessed-analysis-upcoming-brazilian YouTube Screenshot The first round of the Brazilian presidential election takes place on Sunday. It is ostensibly between two major candidates -- the incumbent president, leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and on the right, Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro who is currently under house arrest in poor health. Politico seems to be portraying President Donald Trump as the real opposition to the socialist Lula. Politico's obsession with Trump in Brazil begins with the title of their Thursday story by Camille Gus, "A new Bolsonaro could pull Brazil away from Europe — and toward Trump."The election comes as Brussels seeks to deepen ties with friendly countries in response to an onslaught of Chinese exports and U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionism. Brazil — a nation of 213 million people, rich in critical minerals and Mercosur’s largest economy — is key to that effort.The concern in Brussels is that a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency would make the Mercosur trade agreement more politically toxic in Europe while drawing Brasília closer to Washington — where Trump has cast himself as a staunch ally of the Bolsonaro family.“There is a clear sense that if Bolsonaro wins, Brazil will become closer to the United States,” said Welber Barral, Brazil’s foreign trade secretary during Lula’s second term from 2007 to 2011.Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison last year after Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted him of leading a coup attempt to overturn his 2022 election defeat. The case has been a source of tension between the U.S. and Brazil, with Trump citing the “politically motivated persecution” of Bolsonaro Sr. when he imposed a 40% duty on Brazilian goods.Politico clearly feels empathy for the European socialists and Greens and their wishes for a trade agreement to consolidate their leftist goals.The interesting thing about this story is that although Camille Gus has focused upon Trump, she completely avoided any mention of the huge corruption scandal that has overshadowed the presidential election involving Lula's political ally, the judge who ordered the arrest of former president Bolsonaro, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.  So important is this scandal and its impact on the election that even the leftist New York Times felt compelled to report on it on September 24 in, "The High-Stakes Corruption Scandal Shaking Up Brazil’s Election."...an explosive scandal linking Justice Moraes to a disgraced banker at the center of a multibillion dollar fraud scheme has plunged Brazil’s highest court into a crisis, reshaping a narrow presidential election just weeks away. The crisis began when another justice made public a damning police dossier suggesting that Justice Moraes may have exchanged dozens of messages with the banker, Daniel Vorcaro.In texts apparently sent to Justice Moraes, Mr. Vorcaro asked for help avoiding arrest. In other exchanges with associates, Mr. Vorcaro mentioned paying millions to a law firm run by the justice’s wife....overnight, the revelation has become a major electoral issue, outraging Brazilians and setting off calls to hold Justice Moraes and the Supreme Court accountable.Got that? Even the New York Times has labeled this  as a "major electoral scandal." Something that Camille Gus has somehow managed to overlook but, hey, at least she remained focused on Politico's White (or Orange) Whale ...Trump. October 3rd, 2026 8:36 PM P.J. Gladnick 297080 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2026/10/03/cnns-cornish-cant-believe-paxtons-ai-ad-okay-guests-school-her Elliot Williams CNN This Morning 10-2-26 On Friday's CNN This Morning, here's how host Audie Cornish explained why she didn't play the audio of GOP Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton's AI-generated ad against Democrat James Talarico: "One of the reasons I didn't play for you this ad in its audio, is because, at a glance, it looks like Talarico is saying these things. Visually, you just see the quote, but it actually sounds like it's coming out of his mouth, and I don't understand why that's okay." Two members of the Group Chat, a former Obama appointee and a Never Trumper, surprisingly schooled Audie. Elliot Williams, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General appointed by Obama, explained that the words were quotes from Talarico. "The problem is that [in] campaigns, virtually anything that's produced by AI is speech, and a lot of it is going to be protected under the First Amendment . . It gets way more complicated, because those are James Talarico's words. If [these] were fabricated quotes of James Talarico saying ridiculous things that he'd never said, they'd have a much stronger legal case for getting that taken down." Michael Warren of the Never-Trumper website The Dispatch seconded the Williams point: "It's ugly, and it's sort of shameful, but this is politics, and politics has been shameful and ugly for a long time. I don't like this, and I wish that it weren't protected speech, but it seems like Elliott's absolutely right." Cornish seemed to back off at least a bit in response to Williams' schooling:  "I see. So that's why they have the quotes there, to show we got this from somewhere."   pic.twitter.com/fZHsnhNwct— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) October 2, 2026 A clip was aired in which Talarico complained about the ad "putting words in my mouth." The ad did show Talarico mouthing the words. But as Williams pointed out, the wildly woke words were Talarico's. Talarico really did say: "God is nonbinary." "God is not a Christian." "There are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six." "Jesus was a radical feminist." "Jesus never asked people to worship him." "I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity." You can view the entire ad, audio included, here:Conservatives might suspect that many of the things we hear from liberal media hosts are so outlandish that they must be AI-generated. But, like Talarico's takes on Christianity, they are all too real. Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 10/2/26 6:48 am EDT AUDIE CORNISH: I want to turn to this, 'cause we are still talking about the campaigns, especially in places like Texas, where right now, if you're a voter in Texas, you have probably seen this attack ad from Texas Republican Ken Paxton. And here's where we begin. This is not James Talarico. It is an AI-generated version of the Texas Democrat. It was created by the Paxton campaign, and Talarico has been saying this about these ads. JAMES TALARICO: Texans are sick of these AI ads trying to deceive voters, putting words in my mouth, these data centers that are popping up in our communities, soaking up all our water, driving up our utility prices. And Ken Paxton, the reason he's using AI, is that he is bought by the AI industry. CORNISH: Another Texas Democrat, Vikki Goodwin, filed a police report against her Republican opponent, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Goodwin says two of Patrick's AI-generated videos of her violate a Texas law against misrepresenting an opponent's identity with the intent to injure a candidate or influence an election. Texas tried to draw the line around political deepfakes seven years ago, but is that law enough to cover what campaigns can create now? Back to you very briefly, because we've heard the president say the Justice Department is the way we are going to regulate AI, but the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day of it looks like this. Right? ELLIOT WILLIAMS: Right. The problem is that any campaigns, virtually anything that's produced by AI is speech, and a lot of it is going to be protected under the First Amendment. Now, states have different ways they regulate it. When the ad runs, as you see in Texas, they have a 30-day rule that you can't put such ads out within 30 days of an election, where, what state happens, and also, is there a disclaimer? Fifty different, fifty different regulatory schemes. CORNISH: I know, but when the speech is coming right out of the person's mouth. Like, one of the reasons I didn't play for you this ad in its audio, is because at a glance, it looks like Talarico is saying these things. Visually, you just see the quote, but it actually sounds like it's coming out of his mouth, and I don't understand why that's okay. WILLIAMS: It gets way more complicated, because those are James Talarico's words -- CORNISH: I see. So that's why they have the quotes there, to show we got this from somewhere. WILLIAMS: Absolutely. If this were fabricated quotes of James Talarico saying ridiculous things that he'd never said, they have a much stronger legal case for getting that taken down. MICHAEL WARREN: No. No, I agree. It's ugly, and it's sort of shameful, but this is politics, and politics has been shameful and ugly for a long time. I don't like this, and I wish that it weren't protected speech, but it seems like Elliott's absolutely right. October 3rd, 2026 7:22 PM Mark Finkelstein 297075 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/03/pbs-compares-daniel-penny-defenders-luigi-mangione-fans PBS anchor Christiane Amanpour rewound to 2023 on Friday as she welcomed author Giridharadas to promote his new book on the Daniel Penny case. According to Giridharadas, the case represented a cautionary tale of what happens when people develop a “sense of desertion” that they feel forces them to take matters into their own hands, which is also why some people on the left support Luigi Mangione. The fact that the two cases are wildly different was of no consequence to Amanpour or Giridharadas.At one point Amanpour read from Giridharads’s work, “So, you basically—you know, this is fleshing out this Rorschach Test that you say, ‘The supporters of Penny and of Neely had disagreed on every dimension of the case, the basic facts, race, class, mental health, homelessness, policing, crime, and more. But if you step back from some of their arguments to hear the deeper stories they were telling, there were certain echoes. They shared the sense of being undefended. They shared the sense that the cavalry was not coming.’”She then wondered, “So, for me, that last line is—seems to be what is happening right now, whether it's in the United States or elsewhere, that some politicians are reacting to the idea that Americans or British or wherever you go are on their own. So, I first want to ask you, what did you see? You say you spent three years riding that train trying to investigate. What did you find after doing that for three years?” PBS/CNN International's Christiane Amanpour welcomed Anand Giridharadas to promote his new book and rewind to 2023 and compare Daniel Penny to Luigi Mangione, "And this sense of desertion that has become so commonplace and that I experience when I travel to other countries, that… pic.twitter.com/sCeK8ayeR0— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 3, 2026 Giridharadas claimed that, “I think one of the things we have in common around the world right now is this sense of abandonment. And if you look inside that subway car, just starting in that subway car that day, this was an experience that everybody in that subway car had in common, despite all the differences.”He further explained, “Jordan Neely, you know, mentally ill homeless man, felt abandoned by the systems of care. Daniel Penny felt abandoned by a lack of police and a lack of law enforcement that forced him, in his mind, to step up and step in. The passengers on that train, when they testified in the trial, eventually spoke of their own sense of abandonment and kind of being left to their own devices.”Extrapolating the Penny case to society as a whole, Giridharadas continued, “And, Christiane, I think that sense of abandonment, that sense that the cavalry is not coming, the sense that we're on our own, the sense that maybe somebody do something because no one who should be doing anything is doing anything, I believe, Christiane, that is the defining political emotion of this age. The concern is so many people around the world feeling abandoned, feeling unheard and unseen, unrecognized.”He also declared, “And this sense of desertion that has become so commonplace and that I experience when I travel to other countries, that emotion feels common. It is maybe the most dangerous emotion in a democracy because it starts to tempt people with the thought that if nobody's coming, I must fill the void. In this case, it was Daniel Penny filling a void in a subway in New York.”Finally getting to his twisted analogy, Giridharadas proclaimed, “As this case was wrapping up, right during the jury deliberations, there was a shooting in midtown Manhattan of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, and a lot of the reporters who I covered this trial with were immediately deployed to cover that next case. That was their next case. The same arguments started to develop on the far-left that had developed on the far-right that supported Daniel Penny. On the far-left, people were saying, Luigi Mangione, the assassin, stepped into the void of the American healthcare system and the cruelty of that system.”Penny acted to defend his fellow subway passengers from a man who was considered a threat and was eventually acquitted of all charges against him. Mangione admitted in court to stalking a man and then shooting him in cold blood while he was simply out for a walk.Here is a transcript for the October 2 show:PBS Amanpour and Company10/2/2026CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, you basically—you know, this is fleshing out this Rorschach Test that you say, “The supporters of Penny and of Neely had disagreed on every dimension of the case, the basic facts, race, class, mental health, homelessness, policing, crime, and more. But if you step back from some of their arguments to hear the deeper stories they were telling, there were certain echoes. They shared the sense of being undefended. They shared the sense that the cavalry was not coming.”So, for me, that last line is—seems to be what is happening right now, whether it's in the United States or elsewhere, that some politicians are reacting to the idea that Americans or British or wherever you go are on their own. So, I first want to ask you, what did you see? You say you spent three years riding that train trying to investigate. What did you find after doing that for three years?ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: You know, I did spend a lot of time riding the trains and understanding what happened in that train car. And one of the things that's striking, this is an age of division. This is an international show. You have covered these issues in so many different places, and we're speaking to people in so many different places.But I think one of the things we have in common around the world right now is this sense of abandonment. And if you look inside that subway car, just starting in that subway car that day, this was an experience that everybody in that subway car had in common, despite all the differences.Jordan Neely, you know, mentally ill homeless man, felt abandoned by the systems of care. Daniel Penny felt abandoned by a lack of police and a lack of law enforcement that forced him, in his mind, to step up and step in. The passengers on that train, when they testified in the trial, eventually spoke of their own sense of abandonment and kind of being left to their own devices.And, Christiane, I think that sense of abandonment, that sense that the cavalry is not coming, the sense that we're on our own, the sense that maybe somebody do something because no one who should be doing anything is doing anything, I believe, Christiane, that is the defining political emotion of this age. The concern is so many people around the world feeling abandoned, feeling unheard and unseen, unrecognized.And this sense of desertion that has become so commonplace and that I experience when I travel to other countries, that emotion feels common. It is maybe the most dangerous emotion in a democracy because it starts to tempt people with the thought that if nobody's coming, I must fill the void. In this case, it was Daniel Penny filling a void in a subway in New York.As this case was wrapping up, right during the jury deliberations, there was a shooting in midtown Manhattan of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, and a lot of the reporters who I covered this trial with were immediately deployed to cover that next case. That was their next case. The same arguments started to develop on the far-left that had developed on the far-right that supported Daniel Penny. On the far-left, people were saying, Luigi Mangione, the assassin, stepped into the void of the American healthcare system and the cruelty of that system. October 3rd, 2026 2:00 PM Alex Christy 297088 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jeffrey-lord/2026/10/03/trumps-main-2026-campaign-issue-media-stupid Back in 1992 in the race against President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton’s campaign manager/political guru James Carville made clear what the Arkansas Governor’s main campaign issue was to be. Said Carville:  “It’s the economy, stupid.”And so it turned out to be, with Clinton victorious over the sitting President by using the economy as his main campaign issue.Now here we are a full 34 years later and it might be said that the issue to be used by President Donald Trump as he campaigns across the country in the 2026 midterms is this: “It’s the media, stupid.”Indeed, as he criss-crosses the country campaigning for the various GOP candidates in different state races the President is doing his own version of just that: making the media the issue of the 2026 campaign.Here are but a few of the many headlines from over the last two years of Trump’s latest White House tenure:From the left-wing Huff Post:Donald Trump Unloads On CNN’s Kaitlan Collins With Yet Another Bizarrely Personal AttackFrom The Atlantic:Trump’s Attacks on the Media Are Self-Defeating From The New York Times:Trump Sharpens Attacks on a Favorite Foe: The News MediaFrom Variety:How Donald Trump News Media Attacks Undermine the First AmendmentFrom the UK’s The Guardian:Trump complains the US media aren’t bending to his will. Aren’t they?From Reporters Without Borders:Trump’s war on the press: 10 numbers from the US President’s first 100 daysFrom The Hill:The media is under attack — man the barricadesAnd on and on-and on and on - go a veritable grab bag of similar headlines as the President races around the country campaigning here, there and everywhere for GOP candidates in the 2026 mid-terms.Suffice to say the media writ large is growing stir crazy at all of Trump’s targeting.The inevitable question - which, until the November elections - has no answer is: Will this work for the President and the legion of GOP candidates he is campaigning for?It’s safe to say there are those in the media who feel, with a considerable sense of being un-comfortable, that the Trump attacks are working when it comes to undermining the media’s credibility. And there is little doubt various media members are feeling compelled to speak out.Perhaps most glaringly over the top was this from The Hill’s liberal opinion contributor Bill Press, the former CNN and MSNBC host, who took to the pages of The Hill to headline:The media is under attack — man the barricadesFumed Press: Check out any bookseller online. There’s a “how-to” book for everything you might want to imagine, including: how to bake bread, knit socks, draw calligraphy, set up a wood shop or grow food anywhere.And somewhere, I’m convinced, there’s also a “how-to” book on becoming an autocrat. First step: silence and control the media. It’s the playbook successfully used by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin. And it’s the same playbook used today by Donald Trump.Got that? Bill Press is, seriously, comparing dealings of the President of the United States with the media of today to the use of the media in their day by “Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin.”Right. Talk about over the top!There is a central fact here, however. In a 21st century of a very powerful electronic media with instant global reach through television, the Internet, and radio not to mention old-fashioned newspapers, any American President must deal with the fact that his political adversaries are not only willing to smear him but have a blink-of-the-eye electronic capability of doing both just that and doing it whenever they choose at any time of day or night.Safe to say, the job of being a candidate’s or office holder’s press secretary has long since ceased being the slow motion “I’ll get back to you” routine that was once the hallmark of a bygone era. Today, for a press secretary to take the time to blink can mean a landslide of bad PR for their candidate or elected or appointed official/boss.All of which has created the unintended political fact of life that the media itself has become an issue for a media-savvy President like President Trump to zero in on. Which is not to say that other, past Presidents didn’t target the press of their day. In the closing weeks of the 1992 campaign, President Bush pushed a popular bumper sticker with Republicans read: “Annoy the Media, Re-Elect Bush.” Alas, amusing as the sticker was, Bush lost his re-election to Clinton.But the considerable difference in today’s political world is the instant, global reach of today’s media. Running stories that any computer-savvy 10 year old can find and spread in a blink. And that’s before you get to the reality of talk radio.All of which can make it easier for, in today’s political world, President Trump to target his media adversaries and win political support and sympathy for doing so.Safe to say, Americans are going to learn over the next pre-election month just how the media is treating the President - and absorbing what the President has to say about the media.Suffice to say whether Americans like politics or not, whether they like the President or not, and whether they like the media or not, they will be getting a major dose of media controversy and headlines for October and early November of the 2026 midterm elections year. The media itself may be seen as an issue in the campaign. So as is occasionally said in this corner: Buckle in. October 3rd, 2026 1:30 PM Jeffrey Lord 297078 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/emily-keegan/2026/10/03/cnns-kasie-hunt-hypes-blue-wave-contradicts-stolen-election CNN via SnapStream On Thursday, CNN’s The Arena With Kasie Hunt entertained a conversation with Representative Jason Crow (R-CO) , who warned that Republicans could “steal this election,” even in the possibility of a massive Democratic “blue wave.” The segment reeked of irony as Hunt failed to press Crow on the tension between his predictions of a Democratic victory and how Republicans could somehow overturn it.Hunt wasted little time to get to her desired narrative of the segment: the opportunity to push election doom.After painting a picture of the Trump’s Administration “laying the groundwork to declare an emergency” to flip the election outcome, Crow launched into a mirage of claims into how Republicans could be successful in their endeavors:Well, there's no doubt in my mind, Kasie, that there are people in the administration, including the President and people close to him that would love to try to steal this election. That are already trying to suppress votes. Who disregard the will of American voters. Who understand that their policies have failed. And America has now realized that in large numbers, which the polling reflects, and they're willing to do anything to hold on to power, which, of course, is the sign of an autocracy or people that don't care about democracy, which they clearly don't.Crow then declared, “Where does that leave us, though? Where that leaves us is the need to win big, right? Our greatest defense is a large margin of victory here.”Instead of having stopped to challenge his premise, Hunt kept on trucking and ask how those two scenarios fit together.Hunt continued to feed Crow the premise of potential election fraud with the introduction of yet another hypothetical, in which Republicans would manipulate who would be seated in the House upon losing the midterms.  In this case Hunt asked about the Democrats’ plan in this “steal the election” scenario. Crow was able to speculate and boast how his party was “looking at every potential” and had a “litigation plan, a communication plan” prepared “for every contingency.”Later in the conversation, Hunt dispelled the previous talk of a Republican win when she asked Crow about what would happen “should this blue wave be as big as some are predicting or hoping that it will be, Democrats are going to have a group of candidates on the far-left, some of them affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.” This was really just another chance for Crow to explain the plans Democrats had in store once they took over the House.In defense of the Democrats ultimate win, Crow went on to gush about the candidates he has recruited and insisted they would soon arrive in Congress and “make a hell of a big difference” (Click “expand”): You know what's great about that is that we're not a lockstep party, that we're not like the mega Republicans now who lack ideological diversity, who lack ideas, who lack independence, and just do what this president requires them to do. I never want to belong to any organization, a political party, anything that requires singularity, that requires moral bankruptcy.We are a broad tent. We have ideological diversity, which is why we're stronger, which is why we have better ideas and why we're going to win. So that's number one. Number two is, again, as a battleground chair, I'm working now with over 40 candidates who are pragmatic folks. Who are fighters, who are former sheriff's deputies, small business owners, combat veterans, nurses, doctors, scientists, people that worked for NASA, people that were DOGEd by this President who said “my time in public service isn't up. I'm going to serve in a different way."That's the story of this election. These patriots have stepped up to defend our country, and they're going to come into this caucus. They're going to make a hell of a big difference, and they're going to help us build something new and better.So which was it? Was a Democratic “blue wave” coming, or were Republicans somehow going to “steal” an election Democrats were supposedly winning by a massive margin? Hunt never asked, letting Crow bounce between predictions of a Democratic landslide and dire warnings about Republicans overturning it.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:CNN’s The Arena With Kasie HuntOctober 1, 202604:21:55 p.m. Eastern(...)KASIE HUNT: Congressman, there had been a number of behind-the-scenes conversations among Democrats about the possibility that the administration was laying the groundwork to declare an emergency that would essentially allow them to invoke some of these powers. Where are those conversations today, especially as polling seems to indicate that a blue wave may be bigger than perhaps initially anticipated?(D) REP. JASON CROW (ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE): Well, there's no doubt in my mind, Kasie, that there are people in the administration, including the President and people close to him that would love to try to steal this election. That are already trying to suppress votes. Who disregard the will of American voters. Who understand that their policies have failed. And America has now realized that in large numbers, which the polling reflects, and they're willing to do anything to hold on to power, which, of course, is the sign of an autocracy or people that don't care about democracy, which they clearly don't.Where does that leave us, though? Where that leaves us is the need to win big, right? Our greatest defense is a large margin of victory here.I'm the battleground chair for House Democrats. And for the last 18 months, I've been recruiting and mentoring candidates, building out our battlefield around the country. I've been to 11 different states. I'm working with dozens of candidates. I've held dozens of events, roundtables from Wisconsin to Michigan to New Hampshire to Virginia to Arizona to California and everywhere in between.And what I can tell you is something big is happening here. We have incredible candidates. Americans right, left, and center are joining together to retake their country, and we're going to win. So, we're going to have a large margin of victory, that is my hope, which will limit their options to try to steal this election.HUNT: Using the language “steal the election” echoes what Republicans have said. Do you think Democrats using that rhetoric helps build faith in the system?CROW: Well, there's a difference between the actions of a runaway presidency and someone who doesn't care about the Constitution in what is an extremely safe and secure election system, right? Our election system is very safe. It's very secure.I sit on the Intelligence Committee, Armed Services Committee, and what I can tell you is it remains safe and secure. And our intelligence assessments right now, under this intelligence community, is telling us that it remains safe and secure. And in Colorado and other places around the country, we have high rates of voter participation, we have mail-in voting.So that's not the issue. The issue is whether or not you have a president that will disrespect that and ignore the will of the voters. That's the difference. And that's what we're trying to combat right now.HUNT: One of the other pieces of this conversation, too, behind the scenes has been questions about how the Republican- the current Republican majority might use the rules and procedures in the House or change them or try to alter them if, in fact, they lose, to try to perhaps not seat the next Congress appropriately.There are a lot of hypotheticals there, of course, but I'm interested to know what you have heard or what you are hearing among Democratic leaders about laying groundwork to potentially prepare for that.CROW: Well, hope is not a plan, right? I'm a military guy --HUNT: Of course, not.CROW: -- so military people plan for every contingency.We red team things, we war game things. We're looking at everything. We're leaving no stone unturned.We have an incredible task force and group of people in the House. We have a litigation plan, a communication plan. We're looking at every potential, and we're not going to just hope things go our way. So, number one, again, our greatest defense is a large margin of victory. The bigger our margin of victory and the deeper we go into red territory, the fewer options they have.But we're going to be vigilant. We're going to be prepared, if necessary, to defend Americans, to defend Coloradans, to defend the rule of law.That is our job. That's what the Constitution requires, and we'll be ready for it.HUNT: Of course, should this blue wave be as big as some are predicting or hoping that it will be, Democrats are going to have a group of candidates on the far-left, some of them affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. They're already potentially calling themselves The Bloc. We, of course, have seen factions like that really disrupt governance, mostly on the Republican side with the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus.But I'm interested to know if you think Hakeem Jeffries, who's the likely next Speaker, is up to the task of handling that?CROW: Yeah. Well, absolutely he is, number one. Number two, that's not a controversy, actually. That's the beauty of our caucus. Everyone's like, oh, controversy, infighting. You know what's great about that is that we're not a lockstep party, that we're not like the mega Republicans now who lack ideological diversity, who lack ideas, who lack independence, and just do what this president requires them to do. I never want to belong to any organization, a political party, anything that requires singularity, that requires moral bankruptcy.We are a broad tent. We have ideological diversity, which is why we're stronger, which is why we have better ideas and why we're going to win. So that's number one. Number two is, again, as a battleground chair, I'm working now with over 40 candidates who are pragmatic folks. Who are fighters, who are former sheriff's deputies, small business owners, combat veterans, nurses, doctors, scientists, people that worked for NASA, people that were DOGEd by this President who said “my time in public service isn't up. I'm going to serve in a different way.”That's the story of this election. These patriots have stepped up to defend our country, and they're going to come into this caucus. They're going to make a hell of a big difference, and they're going to help us build something new and better.HUNT: All right. Congressman Jason Crow, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your time today.(...) October 3rd, 2026 12:10 PM Emily Keegan 297083 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/03/kimmel-and-bernies-midterm-pitch-vote-democrat-or-people-die ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel closed out his week of Brooklyn shows by welcoming Sen. Bernie Sanders to a rare Friday episode. What was not rare, however, was Kimmel using the interview to team up with his guest in an effort to give the liberal audience a pep talk on why Democrats need to win in November. According to Sanders, one such reason is that Republicans are killing people with their health care policies.Sanders was giving his typical stump speech when he hyped three far-left Senate candidates in particular, “That’s why this election is so important. I am an independent. I caucus with Democrats. But it is absolutely imperative, in my view, to do two things. We have to elect strong progressives to the United States Congress who have the guts to take them on the oligarchs. People like Abdul in Michigan and Peggy in Minnesota and Angie in Florida, but in addition to that, we have to make sure that Democrats control the House and the Senate so we can hold this guy accountable.” After Bernie Sanders stumps for Abdul El-Sayed, Peggy Flanagan, and Angie Nixon, Jimmy Kimmel almost stumbles on a good question, but can't quite get there, "Now, obviously Trump doesn't want that to happen. And he has offered every American $5,000 if the GOP wins. Which is, you… pic.twitter.com/1xqx9ulIGT— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 3, 2026 Kimmel reacted by almost accidentally stumbling into a decent question about whether socialism is just an attempt to bribe voters with free money. However, he could not get all the way there and instead just wondered if Trump will actually follow through on his $5,000 dividend pledge, “Now, obviously Trump doesn't want that to happen. And he has offered every American $5,000 if the GOP wins. Which is, you know—I mean, it's kind what they accuse you of, right? Handing out money randomly. Do you think he will pay that $5,000 if they win?”If Trump is being a hypocrite for offering voters free money, then Sanders and Democrats are also hypocrites for suddenly opposing it and calling it a bribe.As it was, Sanders relaunched into his usual talking points that naturally failed to mention that it was Democrats who originally wrote the law that sunset expanded Obamacare subsidies during the Biden era and sold them a temporary COVID relief measure, “If you believe what Donald Trump says—I mean, this is how crass it is. These guys have already given $1 trillion in tax breaks to the one percent. They have thrown 15 million Americans off their health care, low-income and working-class people. Thousands of those folks are going to die.”He also attacked Trump as “a guy who promised the American people during his campaign, we're going to end endless wars. Got us into this terrible war in Iran. Nineteen Americans dead, hundreds wounded, thousands of civilians dead, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. All right, I would suggest that whether you're a conservative, progressive, whatever you may be, do not trust what Donald Trump says.”The Iran War has reportedly cost $43.6 billion, not “hundreds of billions.” Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders-style health care would cost the taxpayers over seven times that on an annual basis, while his free college plan would cost five times that according to his own estimates, but don’t expect the fact-checkers to care. Kimmel certainly didn’t.Here is a transcript for the October 2-taped show:ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!10/3/202612:28 AM ETBERNIE SANDERS: If I may get political here for a moment if I have to—JIMMY KIMMEL: Sure, go ahead.SANDERS: That’s why this election is so important. I am an independent. I caucus with Democrats. But it is absolutely imperative, in my view, to do two things. We have to elect strong progressives to the United States Congress who have the guts to take them on the oligarchs. People like Abdul in Michigan and Peggy in Minnesota and Angie in Florida, but in addition to that, we have to make sure that Democrats control the House and the Senate so we can hold this guy accountable.JIMMY KIMMEL: Now, obviously Trump doesn't want that to happen. And he has offered every American $5,000 if the GOP wins. Which is, you know—I mean, it's kind what they accuse you of, right? Handing out money randomly. Do you think he will pay that $5,000 if they win?SANDERS: If you believe what Donald Trump says—I mean, this is how crass it is. These guys have already given $1 trillion in tax breaks to the one percent. They have thrown 15 million Americans off their health care, low-income and working-class people. Thousands of those folks are going to die. This is a guy who promised the American people during his campaign, we're going to end endless wars. Got us into this terrible war in Iran. Nineteen Americans dead, hundreds wounded, thousands of civilians dead, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. All right, I would suggest that whether you're a conservative, progressive, whatever you may be, do not trust what Donald Trump says.  October 3rd, 2026 11:18 AM Alex Christy 297087 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/03/brooks-flubs-basic-facts-pbs-tries-dunking-gops-midterm-chances The media’s week of trying to focus solely on Republican gaffes and hot mic comments continued on Friday’s episode of PBS News Hour, but the tables turned as The Atlantic staff writer David Brooks flubbed two basic facts when trying to paint the GOP’s midterm outlook as dire.Anchor Geoff Bennett began by recalling Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s recent remarks, “And looking down the ballot, you have someone like Ken Paxton, the Texas Republican Senate candidate, who, as The New York Times first reported, he was caught on tape saying that Trump's midterm convention that they had a couple of weeks ago actually hurt Republican numbers.” After host Geoff Bennett tries to dunk on Ken Paxton for his hot mic comments, David Brooks has two gaffes of his own, "And then it looks like the Senate is going to go. And this is the kind of climate where people you don't think will lose, lose. You get some stray people who… pic.twitter.com/r8E2Wqo8SI— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 3, 2026 He then wondered, “His campaign, we should say, disputes that characterization, but it gets at a larger tension for Republicans right now. How do you run with Trump and away from Trump at the same time?”Brooks was not optimistic about the GOP’s chances, “And the ones who are running away from Trump right now, and there are some, and I give them credit, but it's way too late. You might as well just live with the guy.”He proceeded to predict that “midterms are generally about the president and his approval rating. It's very simple. Like, when you're at 38, where Trump is right now, that's just historically bad for a midterm. And so you look at how many seats could go, there aren't many swing states—seats anymore in the Senate—I mean, in the House, so a pickup of like 10 or 15 would be huge these days.”Continuing with the predictions, Brooks made his first gaffe, “And then it looks like the Senate is going to go. And this is the kind of climate where people you don't think will lose, lose. You get some stray people who seem safe and they lose. I have got a sneaking suspicion. In Kansas, a guy named Adam Hamilton, Democrat, is running for governor.”He then quickly followed it up with his second, “And that—a Democrat winning the seat of governor in Kansas? But that may happen this time. That's the kind of climate we're in.”Hamilton is running for Senate, and Kansas currently has a Democratic governor in Laura Kelly. Yet, Brooks’s flubs went unmentioned, which is odd because it wasn’t that long ago when Bennett was talking with former Republican Governor-turned-longtime Democratic surrogate Bill Graves about how great Hamilton supposedly is.Here is a transcript for the October 2 show:PBS News Hour 10/2/2026 7:29 PM ET Geoff Bennett: And looking down the ballot, you have someone like Ken Paxton, the Texas Republican Senate candidate, who, as The New York Times first reported, he was caught on tape saying that Trump's midterm convention that they had a couple of weeks ago actually hurt Republican numbers. His campaign, we should say, disputes that characterization, but it gets at a larger tension for Republicans right now. How do you run with Trump and away from Trump at the same time? DAVID BROOKS: And the ones who are running away from Trump right now, and there are some, and I give them credit, but it's way too late. You might as well just live with the guy.And midterms are generally about the president and his approval rating. It's very simple. Like, when you're at 38, where Trump is right now, that's just historically bad for a midterm. And so you look at how many seats could go, there aren't many swing states—seats anymore in the Senate—I mean, in the House, so a pickup of like 10 or 15 would be huge these days.And then it looks like the Senate is going to go. And this is the kind of climate where people you don't think will lose, lose. You get some stray people who seem safe and they lose. I have got a sneaking suspicion. In Kansas, a guy named Adam Hamilton, Democrat, is running for governor.And that—a Democrat winning the seat of governor in Kansas? But that may happen this time. That's the kind of climate we're in. October 3rd, 2026 9:32 AM Alex Christy 297086 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-spinnato/2026/10/03/nbc-only-network-focus-letitia-james-cornell-case-appointment NBC/Snapstream After the weeklong coverage of the Cornell rape allegation, on Friday, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul decided to get involved and appointed State Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the case after the allegations of “Jane Doe” against fraternity members resurfaced in a civil lawsuit against the school. NBC Nightly News was the only Friday broadcast newscast to mention the controversy over James’s selection.Both NBC and CBS led their evening newscasts with reports on the allegations, while ABC decided to stick with the apparent attempted hijacking of a flydubai flight heading for Israel by a pilot who was known to be radicalized.While ABC and CBS did share the news of the appointment of James as special prosecutor and aired clips from a Hochul press conference, they did not note the controversy about James' role given a social media post on her official account that seemed to have already made up her mind on if the allegations were true or not: What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers.To her, and to all survivors: you’re not alone. We stand with you.https://t.co/az4ViQwgy1— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) September 28, 2026 However, NBC did give a particular focus to the James aspect of the case, introduced by Tom Lamas and reported on by Maggie Vespa. NBC was the only broadcast news show on Friday to have a decent amount of focus on the controversy behind Democrat New York Governor Kathy Hochul's appointment of Attorney General Letitia James to be special prosecutor in the Cornell rape case.The report played a question asked… pic.twitter.com/O0w7q0KU37— Nick (@nspin310) October 3, 2026 Llamas began, “New York Governor Kathy Hochul saying today that she believes the former Cornell student, who says she was raped by fraternity members back in 2024. And now Hochul is appointing the state's attorney general, Letitia James, to take over the case. But James, tasked with being an independent prosecutor, being asked about a statement she posted on Facebook that could complicate her role.”Vespa first highlighted the Hochul press conference: “Tonight, the Cornell rape investigation taking a dramatic turn, with New York Attorney General Letitia James vowing to pursue criminal charges if the evidence supports them.”Vespa noted, "Hochul appointing James as special prosecutor, saying she's lost faith in the local D.A.. Matthew van Houten, who two years ago declined to file charges after a female student, now known as Jane Doe, accused multiple members of the Chi Phi fraternity of assault.”She then turned to the controversy around Jame’s selection: “James, also facing questions about her own comments on the allegations after posting earlier this week that what happened to Jane Doe was horrific and unacceptable.”NBC even played a question to James which asked, “Why did you appoint an official who made a public statement affirming those allegations as fact? As someone who is supposed to be doing an investigation?”Hochul responded by saying, "I will answer that. I have every confidence in our attorney general.”Vespa then introduced James’s response: “I will not comment on a Facebook post."Again, ABC left out this detail from their report, with only a brief mention of Hochul appointing James coming at the end of an Aaron Katersky report, where Katersky asked Hochul, “[W]hat made you lose faith in the Tompkins County district attorney's office?CBS also did not mention the post, but wondered about the "political baggage” of appointing James:Governor Hochul says the attorney general's investigation will not only look at the facts of the case, but also how it was handled. I asked Jane Doe's attorney if he worries whether Letitia James's appointment carries any political baggage. He says this case has nothing to do with politics, and he thinks that James has the resources needed to dedicate to this case.The transcripts from NBC, ABC, and CBS are below. Click "expand":NBC Nightly NewsOctober 2, 20266:32:34 PM EasternTOM LLAMAS: Good evening, and we thank you for joining us on this Friday night. We begin with a major development in the rape accusation rocking the Ivy League campus of Cornell with a special prosecutor now taking over the case, calling it an active criminal investigation. New York Governor Kathy Hochul saying today that she believes the former Cornell student, who says she was raped by fraternity members back in 2024. And now Hochul is appointing the state's attorney general, Letitia James, to take over the case. But James, tasked with being an independent prosecutor, being asked about a statement she posted on Facebook that could complicate her role. And tonight, NBC News has obtained hundreds of pages of evidence from the school's investigation. And we have new details tonight about who first brought the case to the authorities. And we're hearing more from the accused men in the weeks that followed about what they say they saw happen inside of the house. We should note this is a very complicated case with a lot of conflicting accounts of exactly what happened. We begin with Maggie Vespa on the ground at Cornell University in upstate New York.[Cuts to report]MAGGIE VESPA: Tonight, the Cornell rape investigation taking a dramatic turn, with New York Attorney General Letitia James vowing to pursue criminal charges if the evidence supports them.NEW YORK AG LETITIA JAMES: I know that you want answers. I do, too. A comprehensive investigation of this nature takes time, but my office is committed to seeing it through.VESPA: Governor Kathy Hochul appointing James as special prosecutor, saying she's lost faith in the local D.A.. Matthew van Houten, who two years ago declined to file charges after a female student, now known as Jane Doe, accused multiple members of the Chi Phi fraternity of assault.NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL: She spoke to the police. She said for hours and told them exactly what happened to her, in what world does the district attorney not interview her or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?VESPA: James, also facing questions about her own comments on the allegations after posting earlier this week that what happened to Jane Doe was horrific and unacceptable.REPORTER AT HOCHUL PRESSER: Why did you appoint an official who made a public statement affirming those allegations as fact? As someone who is supposed to be doing an investigation?HOCHUL: I will answer that. I have every confidence in our attorney general.VESPA: But Hochul, defending her choice. And James, with this response:JAMES: I will not comment on a Facebook post.(...)ABC World News TonightOctober 2, 20266:37:43 PM EasternAARON KATERSKY: Tonight, that D.A. is off the case. New York Governor Kathy Hochul naming the state's Attorney General a special prosecutor and taking aim at Cornell.[To Hochul at Press Conference] Governor, can you clarify what made you lose faith in the Tompkins County district attorney's office?HOCHUL: 'I’m deeply disturbed at Cornell university's police and how they handled this. They were the first ones to be able to interview and have their questions answered. And yet this young woman tell her story, Them sending a partial record over is, in my judgment, a failure.KATERSKY: Cornell has said it conducted a thorough investigation. Several of the accused have denied wrongdoing. And tonight, David, Jane Doe’s attorney says he worried this was being swept under the rug, so he's welcoming the appointment of a special prosecutor, David?(...)CBS Evening NewsOctober 2, 20266:31:56 PM EasternLILLA LUCIANO: Today, a visibly angry New York governor put the Cornell rape investigation into the hands of Letitia James as a special prosecutor.HOCHUL: This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable, and then at every turn, she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her.(...)6:34:09 PM EasternLUCIANO: Governor Hochul says the attorney general's investigation will not only look at the facts of the case, but also how it was handled. I asked Jane Doe's attorney if he worries whether Letitia James's appointment carries any political baggage. He says this case has nothing to do with politics, and he thinks that James has the resources needed to dedicate to this case. CBS News has reached out to all of the accused. Two of the attorneys hae come back to us. They've denied the allegations.(...) October 3rd, 2026 12:17 AM Nicholas Spinnato 297085 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-spinnato/2026/10/02/cbs-bashes-trump-over-polls-numbers-and-snap-changes-amid CBS/SnapStream On Friday night, CBS Evening News bashed President Trump amid his campaign rally stop in Mobile, Alabama, as longtime White House correspondent Weijia Jiang hit the president on the economy and SNAP program work requirement changes from the Big Beautiful Bill. The report, featuring an Alabama food bank, also hit Trump on gas prices and low numbers in approval polls, a new media favorite, amid the newfound increase in midterm election coverage.Jiang led her report by pointing out how the rallies are taking place in Republican-led states in a seeming opening jab on Trump not being in swing states: “Tonight President Trump is campaigning in deep-red Mobile, Alabama. His third visit to a Republican-led state in two days.She continued and cited poll numbers: “But the president's approval rating is at near-record lows, in large part because of his handling of the economy.” In more midterm coverage on broadcast networks, Friday’s CBS Evening News featured a report from Weijia Jiang that hit President Trump from his Midterm campaign stop in Alabama, as she highlighted low approval numbers and bashed the new SNAP benefits eligibility requirements from… pic.twitter.com/lvkhp5fbUw— Nick (@nspin310) October 3, 2026 In more of her economic doomcasting, her report on a Trump rally in Alabama then focused on an Alabama food bank. Jiang said there was a “spike of requests” at food banks in Alabama, something she blamed on changes to SNAP from the Big Beautiful Bill that was passed last year: In Theodore, Alabama, this food bank says it is dealing with a spike in requests for help after Trump's Big Beautiful Bill changed eligibility requirements for food stamp benefits, including expanded age limits for workers and fewer carve-outs for veterans.In an effort to tie everything together, Jiang turned to gas prices and their impact on transportation of food from food banks.To her credit, Jiang did mention how Europe and the G7 agreed to release diesel in an attempt to lower prices and block a potential ban on the U.S. exporting diesel from Trump:With diesel and gas prices soaring, Trump announced Europe will release diesel from its stockpile. In other details not reported by the other broadcast network, Jiang mentioned the FBI arrest of three University of South Alabama students for threats against the president ahead of his Friday night rally at the school.Still, CBS and Jiang's Trump-bashing report proved once again they were not “MAGA TV." Thursday’s Good Morning America on ABC also took issue with new work requirements for SNAP, described as "tighter eligibility rules from the GOP-backed spending bill pushed by President Trump last year."Robin Roberts worried, “And they so need this - these benefits.” Rebecca… https://t.co/fWsySvsYRm pic.twitter.com/nRNUpdqylO— Nick (@nspin310) October 3, 2026 Earlier this week on Thursday, ABC’s Good Morning America also hit on the changes to SNAP and hit a somber tone on its impacts.Host Michael Strahan began and said, “nd we’re going to turn now to roughly 37 million Americans facing changes this morning to SNAP, the program that helps people with low income pay for groceries.” He then directly mentioned the changes stemmed from “the rollout of tighter eligibility rules from the GOP-backed spending bill pushed by President Trump last year.”Rebecca Jarvis followed with more details: “The families hardest hit by inflation because rising costs take up a much larger share of their budget are also most dependent on these SNAP benefits.”What was forgotten from both reports was that SNAP was supposed to be a temporary program. Last year, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also claimed SNAP was full of “rampant fraud.”The transcripts are below. Click "expand":CBS Evening NewsOctober 2, 20266:39:12 PM EasternTONY DOKOUPIL: President Trump is back on the campaign trail tonight, hoping to give Republicans a boost ahead of the midterm elections. Here is senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang.[Cuts to report]WEIJIA JIANG: Tonight President Trump is campaigning in deep-red Mobile, Alabama. Hs third visit to a Republican-led state in two days.TRUMP: We are making a lot of progress. When I go there, we win. If I don't go there, we would not do as well.JIANG: But the president's approval rating is at near record lows, in large part because of his handling of the economy. In Theodore, Alabama, this food bank says it is dealing with a spike in requests for help after Trump's Big Beautiful Bill changed eligibility requirements for food stamp benefits, including expanded age limits for workers and fewer carve-outs for veterans.Michael Ledger is the CEO of Feeding the Gulf Coast. He tells us as the need increases, so do costs, as the Iran war drives up diesel prices, which these trucks use to make deliveries six days a week.MICHAEL LEDGER: So you can imagine the amount of fuel that we are using. Every dollar that goes into that tank extra is not going into food and other supports that we are hoping to provide.JIANG: With diesel and gas prices soaring, Trump announced Europe will release diesel from its stockpile. [Cuts back to live]President Trump is speaking tonight here at the University of South Alabama, where three students were arrested in the last 24 hours, accused of making threats against the president. The FBI traced social media messages, allegedly posted by the suspects, that included language about ending Trump's life. Tony?(...)ABC’s Good Morning AmericaOctober 1, 20268:04:51 AM Eastern(...)MICHAEL STRAHAN: And we’re going to turn now to roughly 37 million Americans facing changes this morning to SNAP, the program that helps people with low-income pay for groceries. New benefit amounts taking effect amid the rollout of tighter eligibility rules from the GOP-backed spending bill pushed by President Trump last year. Chief business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis is here to break down what to expect. Good morning, Rebecca.REBECCA JARVIS: Good morning to you, Michael, and something to keep in mind as you’re looking at these new numbers. The families hardest hit by inflation because rising costs take up a much larger share of their budget are also most dependent on these SNAP benefits. So, here’s what you can expect right now: Eligibility depends largely on household income, disability status, and where you live. But Congress has already imposed stricter work requirements on SNAP recipients, raising the age limit for able-bodied adults without dependents from 54 to 64. Before today, the maximum SNAP benefit for a family of four living in the lower 48 states was $994 a month. But starting today, to help offset some of that inflation, that amount rises to $1,023 a month. That works out to a little less than $3 per meal per day. The other change that goes into effect today? The federal government is shifting the burden of running these programs to states, so individual states will start paying 75 percent of the administrative costs, which is up from 50 percent. That can amount to millions more in costs. And, in anticipation of the sweeping changes, some states are already seeing a big drop in SNAP enrollment. Roughly five million Americans, including more than one million children, have already lost access to SNAP, guys.ROBIN ROBERTS: And they so need this — these benefits.JARVIS: Yes, especially with inflation now, Robin.ROBERTS: Especially. All right. Thank you. Rebecca.JARVIS: Yes.(...) October 2nd, 2026 9:48 PM Nicholas Spinnato 297084 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/cnsnews/craig-bannister/2026/10/02/dsa-policies-would-cost-350k-household-shorten-life It would cost the average U.S. household more than $350,000 over the next 10 years – and lower the life expectancy of citizens – if the policies of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are adopted, a study by the Council of Economic Advisers released Friday finds.“Today, President Donald J. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers released a report revealing the severe economic cost – $49 TRILLION, over $350,000 per household – for American taxpayers over the next ten years if the Democratic Socialists of America’s top policies were adopted,” a post on the White House website announced Friday.The report titled, “The Real Cost of Socialism in America,” details “the scathing reality of their destructive policies,” the White House explains:"The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have offered an alternative vision, one relying on taking resources from workers and entrepreneurs or taxing the income of future generations to finance massive spending today. The Council of Economic Advisers took them at their word, examined their policy proposals, and, in the chapters that follow, scored how much their economic agenda would cost the country."The report examine the economic effects of eight key DSA policies:(1) cancellation of all student debt and free college tuition,(2) open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens,(3) abolishing the police and prison system,(4) Medicare for All,(5) universal rent control,(6) the Green New Deal,(7) a 32-hour workweek mandate, and(8) a 5 percent annual wealth tax on billionaires.CEA’s analysis found that the cost to the American public would be enormous:“The net fiscal burden of the seven programs that can be scored against the federal budget would total more than $49 trillion over ten years, which would be financed either by debt or by tax increases on the American people. This amounts to approximately $355,000 per American household.”The report examines the two ways that price tag might be financed.If the DSA promises are financed by deficit spending (taking on additional government debt), inflation would increase to double-digit levels, with cumulative excess inflation of 130 to 160 percentage points over ten years, increasing costs for Americans.If the DSA promises are instead financed by increasing taxes on hardworking Americans, CEA estimates that the tax hikes would lower U.S. economic output (real annual GDP) by 14.6 percent in perpetuity. “This is driven by fewer machines, fewer factories, and less intellectual property, and by a 16.2 percent fall in total labor hours—less employment,” the CEA report notes.The CEA also assessed the impact of implementing the DSA’s public-safety platform of abolishing the police, reclassifying offenses as misdemeanors, eliminating cash bail, and shortening sentences, determining that it would result in 1,000 additional crimes per 100,000 people per year – and shorten the life expectancy of those living in those lawless areas:“A 110-day decrease in the average life expectancy of the people living in these communities (2.5 years when the additional crime is violent).” October 2nd, 2026 4:53 PM Craig Bannister 297082 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/10/02/view-whines-hegseth-bullying-fatties-military-need-be-taking ABC via SnapStream Not a single member of The View had ever served in the military. And yet, the windbag hags felt their opinions actually meant something when it came to Secretary Pete Hegseth’s focus on fitness and grooming standards. They whined that Hegseth was being a “bully” for calling out unfit service members as fat and proclaimed that the military “should be taking anyone” no matter what, and that fitness and the infantry didn’t matter because of drones.Following a soundbite of Hegseth proclaiming “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radical, just warriors,” fill-in moderator Sara Haines griped that it was “Not exactly a recruitment video.”Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin thought she actually had the credentials to critique Hegseth’s standards because she worked in the Pentagon’s press shop for a brief time. And she seemingly felt more qualified than the man who had actually led men in combat:FARAH GRIFFIN: But, listen, I worked at the Department of Defense and what Pete Hegseth has done, listen, he was a major in the Army. He did serve our country. But it would have been like if I showed up at this table and was like, Barbara Walters, I'm going to tell you how it's done.DEBBIE MATENOPOULOS: Oh boy.FARAH GRIFFIN: Like, he is literally taking on -MATENOPOULOS: That would not go well.FARAH GRIFFIN: That would not go well. "[War is] not infantry men any more."The windbags of The View have ever served in the military but whine about Secretary Hegseth enforcing fitness/grooming standards. They diminish his military service and claim the military doesn't need the infantry since drones are a thing:… pic.twitter.com/wQnTSovW2o— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 2, 2026 No, Alyssa. A more accurate parallel would be – let’s say, a nepo baby who got her start in politics because of her daddy’s connections, then bounced around from press team to press team until she landed in the Pentagon, and then thought she knew more than a major. But that’s just spit balling.“He is taking on people, the four-star generals, the admirals who have decades of experience both in combat but in working with the civilian workforce, and he’s denigrating their service to our country,” she bemoaned, seemingly under the false impression that generals actually took part in combat.Farah Griffin and legacy guest co-host Debbie Matenopoulos seriously argued that physical fitness standards didn’t really matter because drones existed. They even ridiculously claimed the infantry was obsolete:FARAH GRIFFIN: This whole emphasis he has on like whenever he does these regular Ted Talks on people's weight and their physique. We obviously need a healthy force, but the future of warfare is not, you know, hand-to-hand combat. It's drones.MATENOPOULOS: It's not infantry men any more anyway.FARAH GRIFFIN: Exactly.Claiming the infantry wasn’t needed at all was really a braindead take. How would a military force take and occupy territory without them? Even in Ukraine, where drones were a crucial and burgeoning tool, infantry was needed to hold trench lines and retake settlements. It was a key part of the Ukrainian 3rd Army’s recent successes against Russia in the east.If the infantry was no longer needed, why did the Pentagon just adopt the M7 as their new standard issue rifle? Why were they having FN develop the MTL-30 for their Precision Grenadier System? Why were they reconfiguring the squad-size elements? Legacy guest co-host Debbie Matenopoulos, who never servied in the military whines that Hegseth condemning fatbodies in the military is "bullying them":"He is bullying these people who have voluntarily put themselves in the military and put themselves sometimes in harm's way to… pic.twitter.com/wQMLquXdlH— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 2, 2026 Matenopoulos would later go on to whine about Hegseth being a “bully”:[H]e is bullying these people who have voluntarily put themselves in the military and put themselves sometimes in harm's way to protect our freedoms and protect our country and you are bullying them! You're essentially their superior. You need to act like a leader.He’s not “essentially their superior,” Debbie. He’s second only to the president of the United States in the chain of command.As they were nearing the end of the segment, Haines thought it was ridiculous that Hegseth would care about “waistlines,” and argued that the military “should be taking anyone” who wondered into a recruiter’s office. Legacy guest co-host Debbie Matenopoulos, who never servied in the military whines that Hegseth condemning fatbodies in the military is "bullying them":"He is bullying these people who have voluntarily put themselves in the military and put themselves sometimes in harm's way to… pic.twitter.com/wQMLquXdlH— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 2, 2026 Sara, just because someone might be “willing to fight for this country and make the ultimate sacrifice” doesn’t mean they’re cut out for the military. Someone so morbidly obese that they can’t get out of bed certainly shouldn’t be accepted. What you're asking for is not the type of compassion you think it is. What's you're asking for just creates cannon fodder.We’ve been over this before, girl.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:ABC’s The ViewOctober 2, 202611:04:01 a.m. Eastern(…)SECY. PETE HEGSETH (Department of Defense): No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radical, just warriors.[Cuts back to live]SARA HAINES: Not exactly a recruitment video, but what did you make for his plans for the military?ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I literally thought that last quote was a parody. I saw it circulating on social media, I was like, ‘that's not real. This is SNL. This is not real life.’But, listen, I worked at the Department of Defense and what Pete Hegseth has done, listen, he was a major in the Army. He did serve our country. But it would have been like if I showed up at this table and was like, Barbara Walters, I'm going to tell you how it's done.DEBBIE MATENOPOULOS: Oh boy.FARAH GRIFFIN: Like, he is literally taking on -MATENOPOULOS: That would not go well.FARAH GRIFFIN: That would not go well. He is taking on people, the four-star generals, the admirals who have decades of experience both in combat but in working with the civilian workforce, and he’s denigrating their service to our country.But he also talks about a military that I don't recognize. It's not what I saw when I worked there. We are the greatest fighting force in the history of mankind.MATENOPOULOS: Yes, we are. [Starts clapping]FARAH GRIFFIN: We're not weak. We're not incapable.[Applause]And I don't know where he's hearing this from. But I also - This whole emphasis he has on like whenever he does these regular Ted Talks on people's weight and their physique. We obviously need a healthy force, but the future of warfare is not, you know, hand-to-hand combat. It's drone.MATENOPOULOS: It's not infantry men any more anyway.FARAH GRIFFIN: Exactly. It's just so bizarre! I think he knows that his days are short. I think there's already articles of impeachment for him if the midterms go the way they’re expected.HAINES: And that's what he showed up with if he thought he was on his way out? [Points to the screen]FARAH GRIFFIN: You’d think he would do something different. But no, it feels like his latest Ted Talk.(…)11:06:37 a.m. EasternMATENOPOULOS: You know what? I'd Ike to talk a little bit about him saying about the partisan journalism. I agree with him. Journalism should not be partisan. It shouldn't be in the same sentence. Journalism needs to be objective on either side. It should never ever be subjective. However, his message is lost because of the fact that he has tried to ban the press from the Pentagon, number one.And, number two, because he is bullying these people who have voluntarily put themselves in the military and put themselves sometimes in harm's way to protect our freedoms and protect our country and you are bullying them! You're essentially their superior. You need to act like a leader.(…)11:09:02 a.m. EasternHAINES: Ana, the focus of this whole thing comes back to what you said about unserious. We are talking about a time when we're not only actively in war, we’re talking about the A.I. concerns and how we are underdeveloped. Our computer systems are completely antiquated to battle the A.I. we made in this country.And to think his focus now is on waistlines and whether you - like, who you sleep with at night. Like, really we should be taking anyone who is willing to fight for this country and make the ultimate sacrifice and stop doing whatever this is that he's doing, the whole online dating again. October 2nd, 2026 4:09 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 297081 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/10/02/stelter-trump-and-time-how-dare-he-kvetch-about-his-hypernegative President Trump granted another interview to Time magazine (for another cover story), even if Time’s interviewers want to push him around and try to get him to say scandalous things.In his “Reliable Sources” newsletter, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter summed up the interview this way:One giant ego tripBefore you do anything else today, you should read the transcript of TIME’s brand-new interview with President Trump.The interview begins and ends with Trump’s complaints about the media. Even when asked about Iran or the Senate, he circles back around to his feelings about how his presidency is covered. “You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question,” Trump said toward the end. Screenshot from TIME.com Fact check: False. The interview began with a couple of questions about AI, and then they asked about the press ban. “Why should Americans believe that you respect the free press when you're restricting access to the White House to some of our colleagues?” And then: "Isn't it a founding principle of the country that the press is suppose to hold government and those in power accountable? Do you believe in that?"Not every question was a negative hardball. But the F-bomb came after Time asked: "You mentioned the Democrats will come after you if they win. Are you considering pardoning members of your administration prior to the end of your term?" And then: "Have you seen the videos of Mitch McConnell back in the Senate? Do you think he should resign because of his health condition?"The magazine's "holding government accountable" line of questioning isn't taking into account the dramatic double standard that they and other liberal media outlets have on "holding power accountable." Stelter should revisit how Time's Massimo Calabresi gently questioned Biden about his age in 2024, shortly before the debate fiasco: The last two years of Presidents, two-term President's tenure are usually focused on foreign affairs. You are 81 years old, and would be 86 by the time you left office. Large majorities of Americans, including in the Democratic Party, tell pollsters they think you are too old to lead. Could you really do this job as an 85-year old man? Biden: I can do it better than anybody you know. You’re looking at me, I can take you too. Did you consider not running again because of your age? Biden: No, I didn't. And what do you say to Americans who are worried about it? Biden: Watch me. Look, name me a president that’s gotten as much done as I've gotten done in my first three and a half years. Calabresi told CNN’s Jake Tapper this "I can take you" stuff was "light-hearted” and “quite funny.” As for Biden's “Watch me" line, Calabresi confessed it might be a “stock answer.” But he left it on the table. No need for accountability. They treat Trump as a dangerous figure, and Biden as a jokey grandpa.Stelter reported that Trump has now been on the cover of Time 56 times, more than any other individual. He didn't mention how many of those covers were incredibly hostile to Trump, making him a cartoonish villain, sometimes with a melting orange face. It's amazing he keeps granting them interviews when the "news magazine" has certainly past its prime. But he still wants recognition from press organs that voters under 40 don't consider.  October 2nd, 2026 4:02 PM Tim Graham 297079 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/cnsnews/craig-bannister/2026/10/02/americans-more-confident-about-their-employment-and Americans’ confidence in both their employment outlook and financial future increased in September, the latest results of a national monthly survey by personal finance platform WalletHub released Friday reveal.WalletHub’s Economic Index is based on a monthly survey that evaluates economic prospects based on 10 components of consumer sentiment regarding finances, purchasing plans and employment opportunities.One component index gauges Americans’ confidence that they “will have a job 6 months from now.”“People’s confidence in having a job in the next six months is higher (+3.5%) in September 2026 compared to last year (September 2025),” signaling that they have a “stronger sense of job security,” WalletHub reports.Compared to August’s index, consumers’ confidence in their job status six months hence was up 11.6% in September.The increase in employment optimism regarding the next six months suggests that the disappointing job numbers for September released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics may be part of a short-lived slowdown in job growth.Consumers’ confidence that their finances will improve, another component of the overall index, also rose in September. Here, consumers’ confidence that their finances will be better in six months increased 5.1% from August and 8.1% from September of 2025.Taking all 10 component indices into account, the overall consumer sentiment index shows “consumers felt more confident about their financial outlook in September 2026,” WalletHub reports. September’s Economic Index was up 3.0% from August and 4.4% higher than it was 12 months earlier.September’s results are a promising sign for businesses, as well as consumers, WalletHub Analyst Chip Lupo said in a statement:“The over 4% increase in consumer sentiment over the past year is an encouraging sign that our economy is recovering from the damage it suffered as a result of the pandemic and inflation. People who have high financial confidence are likely to spend more money and reduce their debts, both of which are good for the economy as a whole.”Indeed, small business confidence increased in the third quarter of this year (July-Sept.), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported earlier this week. "The small business economy remains remarkably steady," the Chamber’s Senior Vice President of Small Business Policy, Tom Sullivan, said, announcing results of the Chamber's survey. Looking ahead, 62% of small business owners expect revenue to increase over the next year, 38% plan to increase investment and 36% anticipate adding staff. October 2nd, 2026 2:46 PM Craig Bannister 297077 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2026/10/02/nbc-joins-network-wide-pile-hyping-struggling-trump-gop-ahead Screenshot via NBC/Snapstream After having curiously sat out the pile-on this week by ABC and CBS on their top morning and evening shows against the Republicans and President Trump to paint a blue tsunami as inevitable, NBC finally arrived on Friday’s Today and followed the same script, down to a curious omission of anything about Democrat candidates, policy views, or polls.The left was nowhere to be found, including in the tease from co-host Craig Melvin:One month and counting. The race to midterms entering a home stretch. President Trump launching a major campaign trail blitz in the final weeks…but facing growing frustrations from voters on both sides of the aisle over the Iran war’s impact on prices. Where things stand with just 32 days to go.Melvin later cued up far-left correspondent Yamiche Alcindor (formerly of The New York Times and PBS), reiterating that Trump was “hitting the campaign trail in the home stretch, determined to drive more Republican voters to the polls, but he’s facing some challenges from the economy to record-low approval ratings as well.” After having curiously been absent this week as ABC and CBS carried out multiple strikes on the GOP and their midterm prospects, NBC finally joined in on Friday's 'Today.'Omitted in their story? Anything about Democrat candidates, policies, or how voters feel about them. pic.twitter.com/lLTpdreT4G— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 2, 2026 Alcindor said Trump’s “month of intense midterm campaigning” will aim to “mobilize Republicans who might be less motivated to vote in the midterms because he is not on the ballot.”On that, at least she didn’t go the way of ABC and CBS in acting as though a President going to deep red (or blue) states ahead of the midterms was a new phenomenon.She said Trump’s stops in Oklahoma and Texas included the President “defending his handling of the economy” and “warning Republicans of the consequences of not voting.”Then came the pivot to trouncing the GOP with wholly negative news. Alcindor went further with fear-mongering about Trump siccing the U.S. military on voters (click “expand”):ALCINDOR: The GOP facing an uphill battle with the President’s approval rating record lows and gas and diesel prices continuing to spike amid the war in Iran. A new poll finding that only 17 percent of U.S. adults approve of the President’s handling of the cost of living.TRUMP: Everyone thinks that the prices are high because of me, but they’re not.ALCINDOR: Still, White House officials say the President is planning to hold 36 events in 30 days in 17 states. In a new interview, President Trump telling Time magazine, of the GOP’s chances: “I think we’ll do okay if I campaign.” The President also questioned about the possibility of the Insurrection Act around the midterms, saying: “I could use it.” It would let the President use the U.S. military to police American civilians. The President also blowing up at reporters, telling the outlet: “You have not asked me one blank positive question,” venting about his press coverage, saying: “It’s just bad story after bad story.Alcindor closed by doubling down on Trump being a President “struggling” to muster better poll numbers, thus framing her claim that “White House officials insist deploying him the best way for Republicans to hold on to power” was a folly.ABC’s morning show – the deranged, Trump-hating Good Morning America – surprisingly let the midterms go on Friday, instead opting for a sympathetic interview with the man accused in the now-dismissed Justice Department case about the tears in the Reflecting Pool.CBS Mornings, though, was still on the beat.Here was featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers:President Trump goes back on the road today trying to shore up Republican support ahead of the midterm elections. In Texas and Oklahoma yesterday, he urged Americans to turn up and vote for the GOP, and here’s the thing, though: There are growing signs that many of them will not support the Republican Party because of anger over rising prices and ongoing war with Iran.Senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe remained on the case for the second day in a row, saying Trump “campaign[ed] in two usually red states” and “touted his record even as a new poll shows Americans are deeply frustrated with his handling of the economy and rising gas prices.” 'CBS Mornings' continued their own pile-on against the GOP and "struggling" Trump.Like NBC, Democrats -- who they are, what they believe, etc. -- were nowhere to be found. pic.twitter.com/FwhYeTBnPo— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 2, 2026 At stops in the Lone Star State and Sooner State, O’Keefe said Trump “argu[ed]Democrats should be blamed for high prices,” but quickly discounted that, citing “a new poll find[ing] just 26 percent of Americans approve of the President’s handling of the economy.”O’Keefe doubled down on his “struggling” label from Thursday, continuing to say nothing about the state of any Democrat or the party writ large (click “expand”):O’KEEFE: Those weak economic poll numbers and flagging [sic] Republican enthusiasm has the President traveling to red areas in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio, and Nebraska. [TO TRUMP] Why does Republican states if you’re so confident your party’s going to do all right?TRUMP: Well, I won all of them by a lot, and I’m going there just to make sure.O’KEEFE: He argues it’s a messaging problem. [TO TRUMP] Do you think everyone else in the Republican Party is doing enough?TRUMP: Well, I think the press isn’t covering us fairly. [SCREEN WIPE] I give us an A+ on the government, on economics, on everything.Before ending with a rundown of Trump’s schedule through Monday, O’Keefe took an implicit jab at that last comment from Trump by citing this from Vice President JD Vance to our friends at Real America’s Voice: “You have a few tone-deaf Republicans who say, shut up if you’re pissed off about a $22 burrito. Well, my response to those people is, no, listen to people who are upset with the state of the economy.”To see the relevant transcripts from October 2, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC). October 2nd, 2026 2:27 PM Curtis Houck 297076 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2026/10/02/blackout-evening-networks-ignore-major-upward-revisions If we don’t cover it, it isn’t news. That appears to be the operating philosophy for the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news networks when it comes to anything having to do with the Trump economy. SnapStream The Bureau of Economic Analysis released major revisions for GDP figures for the first and second quarter of 2026 September 30. Specifically, real GDP for the second quarter accelerated at 2.2 percent, which is much higher than the initially reported 1.5 percent, which was in line with economists’s forecasts. In addition, first quarter GDP was also revised up to 2.5 percent from 2.2 percent. Most notable was that the upward revisions were a reflection of stronger consumer spending, investment, and exports.In laymen’s terms, the strength of the U.S. economy under President Donald Trump was vastly underestimated, not that it meant anything to ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, who completely blacked out the news across two days of coverage (September 30 — October 1).What makes this even more egregious is that the major inflation indices the Fed relies on to make rate adjustments, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index was also revised down from 5.3% to 5.0%. Core PCE likewise was ticked down from 3.6 percent to 3.3 percent. The “larger story,” which The Wall Street Journal editorial board emphasized in a September 30 editorial, was that “the economy as a whole looks to be on a stronger footing than during the Biden years when growth was driven by government handouts.” No wonder the Big Three didn’t want to touch this news, especially with the midterm elections looming large.But this is not a one-off. The evening networks keep doing this anytime good news about the economy makes its way through cyberspace.On September 15, the Census Bureau released an eye-popping report finding that the official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2 percent, which is the lowest on record. In an adjacent report released the same day, the Bureau estimated that median household income in 2025 “was $87,460, an increase of 2.6 percent from the 2024 estimate of $85,210” and the “highest on record dating back to 1967.” ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening newscasts also treated this news like it didn’t exist across three days of coverage (September 15 — September 17). Recently, the networks also spiked news that drug prices fell around 3.1 percent in July, which reflected the steepest decline since 1963. What does the pattern suggest here? All of the aforementioned stats are data points the GOP — and Trump by extension — could use to completely undercut the Democrats’ messaging on affordability ahead of the congressional and gubernatorial elections in November. ABC, CBS and NBC, which represent the longstanding leftist media firewall, are clearly not too keen on giving any news that befits the Trump brand any oxygen, especially with the prospect that the political pendulum of power will shift again come January 2027. CNSNews Managing Editor Craig Bannister contributed to this report. October 2nd, 2026 2:02 PM Joseph Vazquez 297072 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/02/pbs-1619-project-founder-defends-purposefully-giving-daughter-bad 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones recently penned a column in The New York Times where he revealed that she purposefully gave her daughter a poor education in order to align with her left-wing beliefs. Defending herself on PBS’s Amanpour and Company on Thursday, Hannah-Jones insisted her decision was “for the collective and common good.”Interviewer Michel Martin recalled the horror story that was the school Hannah-Jones decided to send her daughter to, “You write about this devastating moment when she was in the fourth grade, you get her math work back and you discover that almost every answer is wrong. And then the teacher, part of the reason it's wrong is the teacher hadn't been checking it.” 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Joens defends giving her daughter a bad education on purpose, "Now, I also hoped, you know, having been in my household and understood our values that maybe she might understand why we made the choices, but she didn't. She was 12 years old. And… pic.twitter.com/cJQ26PUbUa— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 2, 2026 It got worse from there, “And then you and your husband considered pulling her out then, but instead you fought for help for the whole class. This kind of pattern replicated itself throughout. Some of the administrators were unresponsive. Some of the teachers were incompetent. There were classes that she was in where the teacher was—the teacher's own attendance is sporadic.”Eventually, her daughter discovered the scheme, “So, it's just this one thing after another and your daughter at one point starts looking up the scores and how the school is viewed and what the statistics are. And she says, ‘you put me in a bad school.’ And would you just describe if you wouldn't mind what that was like for you?Hannah-Jones replied that “It was a reckoning. I knew it was going to come. I mean, that's—I—again, like if anybody is clear-eyed about what we were going to be facing, it's someone who has been in these schools for 20 years and has documented them. So, I always knew that my daughter was going to one day ask us about our choices.”As for her daughter’s reaction, she added:Now, I also hoped, you know, having been in my household and understood our values that maybe she might understand why we made the choices, but she didn't. She was 12 years old. And 12-year-olds center themselves, as they should, and she strongly disagreed. She felt she deserved a better education than she received and she didn't understand how we could have resources and not give her that. And so, of course, the piece is very honestly grappling with that truth that we made choices that we felt were for the collective and common good. We tried to live our values and that my daughter bore a cost for that and that she confronted us about bearing a cost for that.Elsewhere on PBS, Hannah-Jones made it clear that she stands by the decision, “People have mischaracterized the piece as me saying I regret that we did it. I don’t.” Nikole Hannah-Jones:“People have mischaracterized the piece as me saying I regret that we did it. I don’t.” https://t.co/cQUmDrNfU1— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 1, 2026 Instead of looking at the failed school as a lesson in the harm of unaccountable teachers’ unions or the need for school choice, Hannah-Jones blames racism and suggests doing away with New York City’s selective admissions for middle schoolers and redrawing attendance zones. Living your values can be a good thing, but if you are presented with clear evidence your values are wrong, you should change them.Here is a transcript for the October 1 show:PBS Amanpour and Company10/1/2026MICHEL MARTIN: You write about this devastating moment when she was in the fourth grade, you get her math work back and you discover that almost every answer is wrong. And then the teacher, part of the reason it's wrong is the teacher hadn't been checking it.And then you and your husband considered pulling her out then, but instead you fought for help for the whole class. This kind of pattern replicated itself throughout. Some of the administrators were unresponsive. Some of the teachers were incompetent. There were classes that she was in where the teacher was—the teacher's own attendance is sporadic.So, it's just this one thing after another and your daughter at one point starts looking up the scores and how the school is viewed and what the statistics are. And she says, "you put me in a bad school." And would you just describe if you wouldn't mind what that was like for you?NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: It was a reckoning. I knew it was going to come. I mean, that's—I—again, like if anybody is clear-eyed about what we were going to be facing, it's someone who has been in these schools for 20 years and has documented them. So, I always knew that my daughter was going to one day ask us about our choices.Now, I also hoped, you know, having been in my household and understood our values that maybe she might understand why we made the choices, but she didn't. She was 12 years old. And 12-year-olds center themselves, as they should, and she strongly disagreed. She felt she deserved a better education than she received and she didn't understand how we could have resources and not give her that. And so, of course, the piece is very honestly grappling with that truth that we made choices that we felt were for the collective and common good. We tried to live our values and that my daughter bore a cost for that and that she confronted us about bearing a cost for that. October 2nd, 2026 12:19 PM Alex Christy 297073 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/emily-keegan/2026/10/02/cnn-tries-downplay-attempted-hijacking-suicide-pilot CNN via SnapStream On Wednesday, CNN’s The Arena With Kasie Hunt gave the recent stabbing of a Flydubai’s captain by his first officer mid-flight a much more mundane approach. Citing it as an “attempted” “suicide by pilot” rather than a potential hijacking, CNN’s Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean compared this flight to past pilots commandeering their planes into danger.In an interview with CNN’s Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond, an unidentified Flydubai passenger recounted, with detail, the timeline of events beginning with the pilots’ altercation in the cockpit. The passenger described the consequential events that followed: “We just felt the plane drop completely and start spinning a little and everyone was screaming. There were children crying and, uh, it was just like a death in front of our eyes moment.”In the aftermath of a group of passengers rushing to the cockpit to seize the assailant, the unidentified passenger described the environment within the plane and the communication among passengers onboard: “Yeah, there was chaos. There were like a few people up front. Um, and then someone kept coming and updating us. And then they told us that there's a terrorist on board.” CNN is so desperate to downplay this latest instance of Islamic terrorism and to contradict Netanyahu, that they're actively dismissing accounts from people who were on the plane and claiming the flydubai hijacking was just an instance of "suicide by pilot." https://t.co/rQXwOP88uK— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 30, 2026 Despite the firsthand experience described by the passenger just moments after the landing in Tel Aviv and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim of the incident as being “an act of terror,” Muntean had a different idea, trying to downgrade the incident from suicide for political cause to a run-of-the-mill mental health crisis:There was the EgyptAir crash 990 back in 1999. The flight the first officer tried to crash the airplane, according to the national transportation safety board.Of course, you probably remember the Germanwings crash in 2015 when the first officer crashed the airplane into the French Alps after the captain was locked out of the cockpit.And then, of course, there was this Horizon Air incident on the west coast back in 2023, when an off duty pilot in the cockpit tried to shut down the engines of the plane. The pilot and first officer of that flight were able to subdue him. Thankfully, nobody hurt in that flight.For the lack of research done by Muntean, it’s easy to assume that the pilot’s fondness for violence and subsequent stabbing spree was a direct result of him being suicidal. According to him, it just made sense for this instance to be the same case as a few other pilots from years past.Yet, for all the evidence, Muntean failed to question the reality of who was on the flight and where it was going. It doesn’t take a genius to question whether or not the plane full of Israeli citizens on its way to Tel Aviv was an underlying reason for the aggressor’s actions.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:CNN’s The Arena With Kasie HuntSeptember 30, 202604:37:57 p.m. Eastern(...)PETE MUNTEAN (CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT): Want you to listen now to what one passenger told our Jeremy Diamond at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv after another Flydubai flight was able to fly these passengers to their ultimate destination. Listen.[CUT TO VIDEO]UNIDENTIFIED PASSENGER: We just felt the plane drop completely and start spinning a little and everyone was screaming. There were children crying and, uh, it was just like a death in front of our eyes moment.[TRANSITION]JEREMY DIAMOND: You saw people kind of rushing down the aisles to get to the cockpit?UNIDENTIFIED PASSENGER: Yeah, there was chaos. There were like a few people up front. Um, and then someone kept coming and updating us. And then they told us that there's a terrorist on board.[END OF VIDEO]MUNTEAN: Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling this an act of terror, although this does sound a lot like at least attempted or successful suicide by pilot attempts in the past.There was the EgyptAir crash 990 back in 1999. The flight the first officer tried to crash the airplane, according to the national transportation safety board.Of course, you probably remember the Germanwings crash in 2015 when the first officer crashed the airplane into the French Alps after the captain was locked out of the cockpit.And then, of course, there was this Horizon Air incident on the west coast back in 2023, when an off duty pilot in the cockpit tried to shut down the engines of the plane. The pilot and first officer of that flight were able to subdue him. Thankfully, nobody hurt in that flight.Still a lot to come out in the investigation here, Kasie.KASIE HUNT: All right, Pete Muntean for us. Pete, always great to see you. Thank you very much for that.(...) October 2nd, 2026 11:50 AM Emily Keegan 297064 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2026/10/02/ms-nows-morning-joe-boosts-author-claiming-2nd-amendment-was On Wednesday's Morning Joe show, co-host Joe Scarborough gave no pushback to liberal author Malcolm Gladwell claiming that the Second Amendment was meant to apply to slave patrols as he complained about the U.S. Supreme Court making gun control more difficult to enact.The comments came during a discussion of Gladwell's latest book, The American Way of Killing, which focuses on gun-related violence. After the first part of the discussion pointed out that European countries have substantially more police officers to help focus on crime compared to the U.S., MS NOW contributor Mike Barnicle followed up by comparing guns to a disease: MS NOW's Morning Joe Lets Guest Claim 2nd Amendment Was for Slave Patrols pic.twitter.com/zp9Zdam9FX— Brad Wilmouth (@bradwilmouth) October 1, 2026 What do you say about a culture, American culture, that when a disease is identified and it's threatening and it's killing people, you can talk about from the inception of polio vaccines through AIDS ... we react ... we find a cure almost immediately? People feel relieved. Guns have been killing Americans on the streets for decades -- decades. And there's nothing we can do.Gladwell ripped the Supreme Court over prominent rulings that have supported gun rights -- even the Heller case which guarantees that Americans have a right to be armed in their homes: "Yeah. I mean, here I have two chapters in the book on the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been a significant impediment here. They have -- the last two major gun rulings -- in the Bruen case and the Heller case -- are abominations."He continued:I actually have fun with them because in both of those cases, the court plays historian and plays linguist, because in the Heller case, of course, Scalia famously. And the -- and the fellow justices try to make sense of the grammatical convolution that is the Second Amendment, which, if you read, makes -- no one would ever write that sentence today. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's commas everywhere.There's this weird initial what's called an initial being clause. Does it modify the main clause? And all of these linguists lined up and told the court, "Okay, here's how people in the 18th century used an initial being clause. -- here's how James Madison used that clause. Here's what James Madison meant."The liberal author then linked the Second Amendment to "slave patrols" as he concluded:What he meant was, we're talking about militias here, and by militias he meant slave patrols, right? And the court had no interest. And when you have a court that pretends to be deeply interested in the historical foundations of the Constitution, and then when the time comes to actually test that interest shows no interest, you have a problem.Scarborough gave no pushback and merely followed up by asking why there is such a difference between violent crime in Chicago and New York City.Transcript follows:MS NOW's Morning JoeSeptember 30, 20268:45 a.m. EasternJOE SCARBOROUGH: How much of this is something that is hardwired in Americans? And how much of this is a failure of our political systems? When post-Sandy Hook you have 90 percent of Americans supporting universal background checks, you've got 80 percent of Americans supporting red flag laws, you have anywhere from 60 to 70 percent of Americans supporting a ban on so-called assault weapons, it seems to me the American people have -- have moved to the center on guns, but the politicians have stayed basically hard right?MALCOLM GLADWELL, AUTHOR: I think that there is a large part of this. This goes to the dishonesty question. We're not having the kind of conversation we should be having. One would have thought that Sandy Hook would have been a turning point --SCARBOROUGH: Right.GLADWELL: -- in our attitude, and it just wasn't.(...)MIKE BARNICLE, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: What do you say about a culture, American culture, that when a disease is identified and it's threatening and it's killing people, you can talk about from the inception of polio vaccines through AIDS, we -- we react, we find -- we find a cure almost immediately. People feel relieved. Guns have been killing Americans on the streets for decades -- decades. And there's nothing we can do.GLADWELL: Yeah. I mean, here I have two chapters in the book on the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has been a significant impediment here. They have -- the last two major gun rulings -- in the Bruen case and the Heller case -- are abominations. And I had -- I actually have fun with them because in both of those cases, the court plays historian and plays linguist, because in the Heller case, of course, Scalia famously.And the -- and the fellow justices try to make sense of the grammatical convolution that is the Second Amendment, which, if you read, makes -- no one would ever write that sentence today. It makes no sense whatsoever. It's commas everywhere. There's this weird initial what's called an initial being clause. Does it modify the main clause? And all of these linguists lined up and told the court, "Okay, here's how people in the 18th century used an initial being clause -- here's how James Madison used that clause. Here's what James Madison meant." What he meant was, we're talking about militias here, and by militias he meant slave patrols, right? And the court had no interest.And when you have a court that pretends to be deeply interested in the historical foundations of the Constitution, and then when the time comes to actually test that interest shows no interest, you have a problem. October 2nd, 2026 11:15 AM Brad Wilmouth 297066 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/02/jordan-klepper-thinks-hegseth-quoting-bible-iran-religious Comedy Central’s The Daily Show host-of-the-week Jordan Klepper closed out the week on Thursday with an intellectually lazy attack on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. During Hegseth’s Wednesday State of the Force address, Hegseth quoted the Bible on multiple occasions, but instead of giving context to the specific passages, Klepper tried to paint Hegseth as a hypocrite because he previously said the Iranian regime was run by “religious fanatics.”After playing the “No fatties.  No trannies.  No beardos.  No weirdos.  No wimps.  No radicals,” line from Hegseth’s speech, Klepper lamented, “I will say this kind of rhetoric is unacceptable from our Defense Secretary. Every American, no matter who they are or what they look like, should have the chance to fight a Middle Eastern country for no clear reason. That's the American way!”Teeing up a 60 Minutes clip from March, Klepper added, “But Hegseth really believes we need a more macho, aggressive military because, as he's told us before, our enemies in Iran are uniquely evil.”  In the clip, Hegeth was shown quickly declaring, “Obviously, we're fighting religious fanatics.”Thinking he had discovered some great gotcha moment, Klepper then cued up another clip from Wednesday, “Of course. Of course. We are in a fight against religious fanaticism. And how are we going to defeat these religious fanatics?”Hegseth was then shown citing several Bible verses in a jump-cut heavy montage, “Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God… The sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah. "Lord, here I am, send me." … As the Psalmists put it, the Lord is on my side… As Psalm 33:12 extols us—”Klepper reacted by retorting, “Yes, yes, yes, we know Psalm 33:12. ‘No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, amen.' We know. We have all read the Bible. We get it.”That is an odd thing to say given the verses Klepper chose to include in his montage. When Hegseth was talking about the full armor of God, he was talking about how “God is good.  Evil is not.  America's military must understand the difference.” When he was referencing Isaiah, he was talking about how those in the military have stepped up to serve. When he was talking about how “the Lord is on my side,” he was specifically addressing chaplains. When Hegseth was invoking Psalm 33:12, he recalled how George Washington and the Continental Army “appealed to Heaven, and we still do today.”Nothing in Klepper’s Hegseth clip montage came anywhere close to suggesting the level of fanaticism that characterizes the Iranian regime, but for The Daily Show, religion is only beneficial when it can be twisted to meet liberal ends.Here is a transcript for the October 1 show:Comedy Central The Daily Show10/1/202611:04 PM ETJORDAN KLEPPER: I will say this kind of rhetoric is unacceptable from our Defense Secretary. Every American, no matter who they are or what they look like, should have the chance to fight a Middle Eastern country for no clear reason. That's the American way! Not to mention—you know what, not to mention, it probably would help if our military had at least a few beardos and weirdos, right? What if Iran challenges us to Dungeons and Dragons? We need at least one druid in the party! Huzzah! But Hegseth really believes we need a more macho, aggressive military because, as he's told us before, our enemies in Iran are uniquely evil.PETE HEGSETH [3/8]: Obviously, we're fighting religious fanatics.KLEPPER: Of course. Of course. We are in a fight against religious fanaticism. And how are we going to defeat these religious fanatics?HEGSETH [9/30] Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God. [jump cut] The sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah. "Lord, here I am, send me." [jump cut] As the Psalmists put it, the Lord is on my side. [jump cut] As Psalm 33:12 extols us –KLEPPER: Yes, yes, yes, we know Psalm 33:12. "No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, amen." We know. We have all read the Bible. We get it. October 2nd, 2026 9:45 AM Alex Christy 297071 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/10/02/perpetual-paranoia-over-cnn-turning-maga-friendly-cbs Screenshot from Snapstream/CNN For months, ideological enforcer journalists who intensely labor to keep left-wing elitist media outlets as leftist and anti-Trump as possible have been panicking over the Ellisons getting their hands on CNN, and turning it into – cue siren noises – another CBS News.Paramount has been cleared to take over Warner Bros.-Discovery and CNN. Alex Griffing at Mediaite reported: David “Ellison, the head of Paramount Skydance, alongside his father, billionaire Larry Ellison, is considered to be a close ally of President Donald Trump, and his potential reshaping of CNN has long been a focus of rampant media speculation.”Translate “rampant speculation” into “perpetual panic.”Those of us who intensely labor to expose left-wing elitist media outlets have pointed out that prolonged exposure to the allegedly ruined “MAGA-friendly” CBS finds very little change in the tone and the topics. They can worry about the future – after hotheads like Scott Pelley staged a revolt inside 60 Minutes and were dropped – but it’s not “CBS Newsmax,” no matter what liberals say.Griffing reported that David Ellison reached out to CNN boss Mark Thompson to encourage him to stay at the helm for now, and that Bari Weiss will not be supervising CNN content. He quoted The Wall Street Journal: “Independence is key for Thompson and he is seeking assurances that he will have wide-ranging autonomy for editorial operations, people close to him said.”“Independence” and “autonomy” can be translated into “freedom to continue liberal bias.” Anti-Trump journalists love describing themselves as “independent media,” when they sound to Trump-voting Americans like rigidly partisan automatons.It’s surely a smart move to retain Thompson if you’re trying to keep the leftists from running to their safe lockers. But the better question is: Why is CNN performing so badly in the ratings compared to Fox, and even MS NOW? From looking at those channels, you could consider shifting to the right, or further to the left.They could also consider just offering more news reporting and less endless speculation, "news analysis," and arrogant lectures from the hosts. A while ago, we found that only about 20 percent of the content on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox was news reports and live news events. Most of the day seemed more like talk TV.CNN could become more neutral like NewsNation, but their ratings don’t suggest a winning formula, either. Clearly, the cable news channels look like silos because that’s the way audience members assemble themselves. They offer a lot of opinion because people like it.  So we get the media we deserve.If you were placing bets, and you’ve watched CBS this year, you’d bet that CNN won’t transform into dramatically different. Kaitlan Collins will still throw hardballs at the Republicans at the White House and then offer softballs to Democrats on her primetime show. Gov. J.B. Pritzker can confidently announce Trump has “dementia” with no pushback.Then there’s CNN.com. Giggle at the concept that CNN's Toronto-based “fact checker” Daniel Dale might write an article noting a Democrat lied about anything. First, Dale should be pressed to call his own socialist prime minister in Canada a liar, just to show he’s been “ruined” by the Ellisons.Everyone should remember that CNN touted itself in Trump’s first term as the “Facts First” network. This came as they spread a bucket of ridiculous claims about Trump and the Russians from the so-called Steele Dossier. In one week in 2018, we found CNN pushed the ridiculous story 77 times that Trump paid Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed once allegedly used by the Obamas in Moscow. Is this the kind of classy “journalism” the lefties worry about losing? October 2nd, 2026 6:16 AM Tim Graham 297070 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/catherine-mortensen/2026/10/02/todays-highlights-what-mrcs-media-watchdogs-are-saying MRC Watchdogs churn out breaking news on a daily basis. Don't miss Today's Highlights, where you can keep up with the top MRC content, whether it's the latest study on media bias, a glaring omission from the elitist media, or how the Big Tech companies are serving up the same leftist spin as the media. Top Stories:MRC Uncovers Leftist Fake News Operation Courier Newsroom Weaponizing TikTokMRC Exposes How ABC and CBS Boast About Republican Candidate StrugglesMRC Highlights Left-Wing Paranoia Over CNN and CBS Becoming MAGA Friendly  MRC Uncovers Leftist Fake News Operation Courier Newsroom Weaponizing TikTokGeorge Soros funded partisan outfit Courier Newsroom is launching a major Big Tech initiative on TikTok to influence midterm voters.The organization operates localized news sites designed to masquerade as independent local journalism while pushing Democratic partisan narratives.Leftist operatives are utilizing short form video strategies to directly target younger demographics across key battleground states.The digital campaign seeks to manipulate public opinion while obscuring its deep financial ties to left-wing billionaire donors. MRC Exposes How ABC and CBS Boast About Republican Candidate StrugglesElitist media news broadcasts from ABC and CBS framed Republican midterm efforts around negative polling and internal candidate challenges.Network correspondents fixated on leaked private campaign audio to portray conservative political efforts as failing ahead of the elections.Coverage consistently highlighted negative economic sentiment while glossing over major economic development announcements made by administration officials.Elitist media outlets routinely omit historical context regarding midterm voting trends to push a narrative of Republican campaign panic. MRC Highlights Left-Wing Paranoia Over CNN and CBS Becoming MAGA FriendlyLeft-wing commentators continue to express outrage over minor corporate leadership shifts at CNN and CBS.Liberal critics panic over any programming attempt that treats conservative viewpoints with basic journalistic fairness.Ratings for elitist media networks like CNN continue to decline as audiences reject partisan left-wing bias.Media watchdogs on the left routinely accuse news networks of surrendering to conservative pressure whenever balanced coverage is attempted. October 2nd, 2026 5:30 AM Catherine Mortensen 293155 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2026/10/02/omission-roundup-slain-nyt-exec-noncitizen-voting-french-riots Once again, it is time to get caught up on some of the stories deliberately missed by the Elitist Media Evening News, which is deeply invested in delivering political narrative and anti-news. Here are some of those stories.Earlier this week, the shocking murder of a New York Times engineering executive was a consensus A-block story on ABC, CBS, and NBC. And then the story suddenly vanished from the evening news. If we learned anything from recent coverage of the White House media ban, it is that the media is the media’s absolute favorite story. So why did this story drop off the face of the Earth? Per The New York Post:The trans New York Times executive allegedly executed by his elderly in-laws in a California parking lot previously threatened to murder his wife and her parents — and chillingly gave his children a book about a young girl whose mom died, according to court documents.Jonathan McKinsey, 40, was allegedly gunned down by Shouyong Zhang, 77, and Shili Chen, 77, in the parking area at Dublin Sports Grounds in Dublin on Saturday afternoon, with witnesses describing how the pair took turns riddling his body with bullets.Additionally:Chen noticed McKinsey’s son had begun asking to wear his sister Alexis’ dresses, a “phase” he was going through, McKinsey said, according to the records.She then began allegedly berating him for the behavior, calling the young child a “disgusting queer” and a “pervert.” Chen also allegedly hit McKinsey’s young son in the back of the head when he asked.When McKinsey begged her to stop, Chen turned her ire to the New York Times employee, who was transgender and transitioned from female to male in 2010, according to the documents.In sum: there was a lot of creepy stuff going on in the transgender NYT exec’s home that became too hot for the evening news. The media obviously have a taste for lurid, given their coverage of the Cornell rape allegations (especially the freaky frat bro chat). So this is more of a case of the media covering for one of their own beyond initial reporting on the murder.In other news you didn’t see on the networks, that thing that we're constantly never happens happened again. In multiple states. Again. Per the Department of Justice:Today, the Justice Department announced charges against 16 individuals in connection with illegal voting, illegal voter registration, and related election-fraud schemes across the country. The charges include unlawful voting by non-citizens in federal elections, false claims of citizenship to register or vote, and related offenses including wire fraud, naturalization fraud, passport fraud, and unlawful firearm purchases uncovered during the course of these investigations.  That’s 16 individuals in Texas. But noncitizen arrests were also recently made in Minnesota, Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Hawai’i, and Utah. That’s a lot of illegal noncitizen voting, but you saw none of this on the evening news.Finally, there are the French “student” riots. En flame mais essentiellement pacifique:Reuters reported the principal of Marseille’s Victor Hugo high school was doused in gasoline and injured, while two other principals were injured in attacks in Rouen and Petit-Quevilly. Police used tear gas in several cities, with Reuters reporting students accusing authorities of heavy‑handed tactics. Meanwhile, authorities are warning of "urban violence" and attempted arson at multiple schools. The protests coincide with the government announcing a series of unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 budget two weeks ago and have become a political flashpoint at a ​sensitive moment for the French government. Several disturbing videos have made the rounds on social media: in one instance, a local mayor joins the rioters and lights a fire. In another, a local woman asking the rioters to stand down gets burned in the face. And in another, a police woman gets chased down and beaten while on the ground: ‼️🇫🇷 𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗘 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢 — « Wallah, sale pute ! Wallah, tuez-la ! »Une policière a été poursuivie, puis balayée au sol avant d’être VIOLEMMENT FRAPPÉE par plusieurs individus à Paris. pic.twitter.com/CGYl4swBnH— Bastion (@BastionMediaFR) October 1, 2026"Wallah, dirty whore," shouted the "youths."These are migrant-adjacent gangs doing the rioting and burning, yet another brutal reminder of the perils of unchecked immigration. Naturally, this can’t go on the evening news. Or, if it does, the story is deeply sanitized- with the rioters referred to as the aforementioned “youths” or “students.”While the Elitist media feed narrative and anti-news to their viewers, big stories continue to shamefully go unreported.  October 2nd, 2026 12:18 AM Jorge Bonilla 297069 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/10/01/newsbusters-podcast-democrat-candidates-can-do-no-wrong As we watch TV news during the midterm season, what we've mostly noticed is that there's not much news about candidates -- just some general tilt against Trump's bad approval ratings. But Democrats get a pass, and Republican flubs are news. So Sen. Eric Schmitt getting his facts wrong in a question to former special counsel Jack Smith is the only story of that hearing. There was no time to consider that Smith was an out-of-control partisan trying to make sure Trump didn't get re-elected in 2024.  GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton caught on audio by The New York Times complaining Trump's midterm convention hurt him politically becomes a TV story. Because good news for Democrats is what is considered "newsworthy." They just do not care how it makes them look like DNC Media.NewsBusters Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro and Senior Research Analyst Bill D'Agostino joined the show. The media ignored Maine Democrat Troy Jackson this week having to apologize after claiming “It’s unfortunate that there are people here in Maine that don’t like to use that term [genocide] only because they’re Jewish and what that means to them with the Holocaust,” Jackson told News Center Maine about Israel. “It fits that description, and it is [a genocide].”Nick explained all the drama over The View co-host Sunny Hostin boasting that she was a holdout juror on behalf of the "Butcher of Tompkins Square Park," who killed someone and then cooked their corpse and fed it to homeless people. She wanted to explain how passionately she favors an insanity defense. As network shows begin returning to television for the fall season, CBS’s liberal, TDS-laden “Sitcom King” Chuck Lorre, who we’ve covered extensively, has once again taken shots at President Trump as a “bloated orange piece of” excrement who he wishes would die of a heart attack on the toilet, and insulted First Lady Melania Trump as a “surgically enhanced, cold-hearted Yugoslavian escort who clearly hates her husband.Finally, NBC's Saturday Night Live loves the socialist mayor of New York so much that they turned President Trump into a desperate Mamdani fan. The fake president told the fake mayor: “I just love hanging out with you. We’re like one of those unlikely animal friendships, like when a tiger gets together with a baby goat. When I see stuff like that, I want to text it to you and say, this could be us!” We even get this fake gush: “You're in most of my dreams. I call you Mam-dreamy. Pick me, choose me, love me!”Enjoy the show below.  October 1st, 2026 10:50 PM Tim Graham 297067 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2026/10/01/abc-continues-milk-paxton-gaffe-while-pushing-poll-doom For a second consecutive evening Disney-owned ABC World News Tonight, the most Trump-deranged of the Elitist Media evening newscasts, has elected to run a news item highlighting Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s remarks complaining on the GOP Midterm Convention. For the second consecutive night, ABC pushed “Republicans in Disarray” and polling DOOM!!11!!Watch the report in its entirety as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Thursday, October 1st, 2026: WATCH: For a second consecutive day, @ABCWorldNews milks the Paxton post-convention remarks and pushes polling DOOM while omitting Troy Jackson's brutal "genocide" remarks DAVID MUIR: This evening, the midterm election of course, now 33 days away. And President Trump, amid some… pic.twitter.com/3eSYK8kt9C— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 2, 2026 DAVID MUIR: This evening, the midterm election of course, now 33 days away. And President Trump, amid some of his lowest poll numbers on record and deep concern over inflation, the president now traveling to five deep red states. Here's Rachel Scott tonight.RACHEL SCOTT: Tonight, President Trump in Texas, where one of the fiercest Senate races could decide control of Congress. He arrived with a new poll showing his national approval rating at 31%, a record low. The president won Texas handily, but now polls in the Senate race show the Democrat, James Talarico, leading Republican Ken Paxton. After the president held his midterm convention in Dallas, The New York Times obtained audio of Paxton complaining it hurt his campaign.KEN PAXTON: When we did that convention, it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.SCOTT: Today in Texas, Trump praising Paxton.DONALD TRUMP: Ken Paxton was at my side more than anybody. And I have to always remember that because he could be a pain in the ass sometimes, I'll be honest.SCOTT: Other Republicans keeping the president at arm's length. Still, President Trump today giving himself a grade A-plus.TRUMP: I give us an A-plus on the government, on economics, on everything. Look at inflation. I inherited the worst inflation in history under Biden, worst in history. And now it's great.SCOTT: But the reality is inflation has jumped since Trump took office from 2.8% to 3.4%. 80% of Americans disapprove of how he's handling it. And today, Vice President JD Vance with a very different message from the president, urging Republicans to not, quote, “ignore people's concerns.”JD VANCE: Listen to people who are upset with the state of the economy. If we don't listen to people, we will turn into the very thing that we hate.SCOTT: This is the president's first major midterm campaign swing. He'll be here in Oklahoma tonight. Then over the next few days, we'll see him in Alabama, Ohio and Nebraska, all states he has won before as he tries to energize his core supporters to turn out to the polls. David.MUIR: Rachel Scott live with us tonight. Rachel, thanks.The report, a rehash of the previous evening’s slop, obviously serves little purpose except to assist Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico and discourage Republicans from voting in the midterm. This explains the steady drumbeat of consistently citing negative poll numbers for President Trump. So devoted to this mission is ABC that they’ve broadly stopped reporting on some of the other Senate races that previously dominated coverage, such as Michigan and Maine. Speaking of Maine, the networks all continue to omit Democrat Senate candidate Troy Jackson’s comments on the Holocaust. Per NBC News Center Maine:Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson is apologizing for comments he made this week in a NEWS CENTER Maine candidate profile interview about Israeli “genocide” in Gaza.In reiterating his view that that the three-year-old Israel-Gaza war “is a genocide,” Jackson said in the interview, “There are people here in Maine that don't like to use that term only because, you know, they're Jewish and, you know, what that means to them with the Holocaust.”Jackson has since apologized for those remarks. An apology would have extended the news cycle into the weekend had a Republican proffered similar remarks. Instead, it is all swept under the rug. Between omitting the Jackson scandal while continuing to flog the Paxton remarks, ABC demonstrates why their news content is under scrutiny. October 1st, 2026 10:18 PM Jorge Bonilla 297068 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2026/10/01/lemire-hits-hegseth-using-explicitly-christian-psalm-its Jonathan Lemire MS NOW Morning Joe 10-1-26 Jonathan Lemire has made a stunning theological discovery!On Thursday's Morning Joe, Lemire played a clip of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Quantico in which he said, "As Psalm 33:12 extols us, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." Lemire's verdict: "Yet again, another moment where Secretary Hegseth uses explicitly Christian rhetoric to describe the military."  Just one problem. It's not "explicitly Christian rhetoric." It is a line from the Psalms, written long before the Christian church emerged. The verse Hegseth quoted is Psalm 33:12, from the Book of Psalms: "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance." The Book of Psalms is Jewish scripture. Christians later inherited the Psalms as part of the Old Testament. What's next, Jonathan? If Hegseth recites the Jewish creed, the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one," will you condemn that too as "explicitly Christian rhetoric"?   pic.twitter.com/hczNWXYugd— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) October 1, 2026 This all came at Lemire trashed Hegseth for reducing the number of general officer slots by 20 percent. Hegseth was shown saying "the media calls that a purge. I call it accountability, and long overdue." Lemire shot back: "We can also call it juvenile and offensive."Liberals like Lemire are on guard about any hint of Christianity finding its way into remarks by public servants, especially the Trump team. So much so that, as here, they flunk Jewish Scripture 101. So remember: no Christianity in remarks by politicians—unless you're James Talarico. Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 10/1/26 8:28 am EDT PETE HEGSETH: Simple translation of that? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. The ideological clowns are out, the patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top. Diversity is not our strength, unity is our strength. The number crunchers say we've fired ten percent of the generals and admirals across the force, and that number sounds about right. And I know, because I directed it, that we've also reduced the overall number of general officer slots by an additional ten percent. So yes, twenty percent reduction across the board. Now the media calls that a purge. I call it accountability, and long overdue. JONATHAN LEMIRE: We can also call it juvenile and offensive. Secretary Hegseth announced several new initiatives to the Pentagon, including an effort to study the future of warfare that will be led in part by Elon Musk, a new autonomous warfare command for robotics, as well as a military office that's focused on religious programs. HEGSETH: Today, at my direction, I'm establishing the Office of Religious Affairs. Starting today, and for secretaries of war after me, the Office of Religious Affairs will report straight to the top. No staff filters, no bureaucratic dilution, a direct line to the secretary. This is not going to be a paper-pushing shop. It's going to have real teeth. It'll protect budgets, demand infrastructure, and strengthen religious support. The experts, our chaplains, will finally have an advocate at the highest levels. Policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission. As Psalm 33:12 extols us, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. LEMIRE: Yet again, another moment where Secretary Hegseth uses explicitly Christian rhetoric to describe the military. It's a non-denominational Department of Defense, to be clear. And this comes, of course, at a moment where many observers would argue that he has made the military weaker by firing so many experienced generals and admirals, passing over others for promotions, those who tend to be candidates of color or, or women. And again, as the Pentagon is bogged down in a war in Iran, and our munitions continue to run low.   October 1st, 2026 9:29 PM Mark Finkelstein 297054 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2026/10/01/poll-what-was-worst-media-quote-week POLL: What was the worst media quote of the week? (Vote below) Watch the quotes from @maddow, @ErinBurnett, and Chuck Lorre below. Video by @Schineman pic.twitter.com/qC8RXJoz4h— MRC Video (@mrcvideo) October 1, 2026 [LANGUAGE WARNING] NOMINEES: Rachel Maddow: Trump Is Ensuring that AI Can Kill Us All “So, Trump moved explicitly to make sure no human can interfere with robots’ ability to kill us. So, it’s, like, been hard, I think, to imagine, ‘How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?’ ‘How is it that A.I. might kill us?’ Well, the really easy thing to imagine is them using military weapons to kill us, and Trump is intervening to make sure they can.”— MS NOW host Rachel Maddow on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, September 29.  Erin Burnett: Trump TV is “Reminiscent of What You Would Find in North Korea”“TrumpTV has so far aired Trump’s inauguration, his new helipad dedication, which, by the way, because there was no pool and no audio, right? His speech to the UN. It’s a weird sort of form of state TV. I mean, right now, with everything going on, people want to rewatch his inauguration? It’s kind of reminiscent of what you would find in North Korea.” — Host Erin Burnett on CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront, September 22.  Producer Chuck Lorre: I Wake Up Every Morning to Turn On CNN to Find Out If Trump Died From a Heart Attack“The burden of my profession demands that I take this opportunity to say a few words about that bloated orange piece of shit in the White House....I’d love to express my gratitude to all the people who’ve devoted their lives to making Project Angel Food an oasis for those in need. That would be my preference. But because I’m a comedy writer, I have no choice but to explain how I wake up every morning to turn on CNN to see if the President of the United States had a heart attack while straining to take a dump.”— CBS’s Big Bang Theory producer Chuck Lorre accepting an award at Project Angel Food’s Angel Awards in Los Angeles, September 26.   Sponsored by James P. Jimirro October 1st, 2026 4:48 PM Geoffrey Dickens 297065 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2026/10/01/cbs-joins-gleeful-abc-boasting-gop-has-struggling-candidates Screenshot via CBS/Snapstream Slowly providing more midterm coverage after relatively few direct segments post-primary season (aside from passing nods to, say, gas prices hurting voters), ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings both touted on Thursday leaked audio from Texas Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton criticizing the party’s Dallas midterm convention and reveled in painting a near-inevitable blue tsunami for their side due to “struggling” GOP candidates.Despite being in a world of hurt before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ABC has shown the most ebullience and quick trigger to heap only bad news on the right and, well, no news at all on the left.Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos led the way with a mini-editorial: “We’re gonna get the latest now on President Trump heading to states that should be safe for Republicans ahead of the midterms, but polls signal trouble for the GOP, even in Texas, with some Republicans concerned the President is dragging them down.” 🧵ABC News — despite being in serious trouble with the FCC — is continuing to be virulent Trump haters, going all negative when it comes to Trump and the midterms.Here was George Stephanopoulos and Biden regime apple-polisher Mary Bruce...Stephanopoulos: “We’re gonna get the… pic.twitter.com/GNnDkL8xJI— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 1, 2026 Chief White House correspondent and Biden regime apple-polisher Mary Bruce doubled down, boasting: “With the President’s approval rating at or near record lows, there are real questions about just how much of a boost Trump will be” as he “is really ramping up his campaign travel to red states.”Both of these seasoned politicos won’t tell their viewers that midterms often come down to base motivation and turnout, so it’s only natural Trump would go to redder areas.Bruce spent roughly the next minute touting the leaked audio about Paxton, the sitting Texas attorney general (click “expand”): Bruce spent roughly the next minute touting the leaked audio about Paxton, the sitting Texas attorney generalShe would never be caught consistently (or at all) harping on negative headlines about leading Democrats pic.twitter.com/HNuKHU71d2— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 1, 2026 BRUCE: This morning, with 33 days until the midterm elections, President Trump heading to Texas, the reliably red state now a key battleground. Recent polling shows Democrat James Talarico with a slight edge over Republican Ken Paxton in the state’s closely watched Senate race, which could determine control of Congress. Paxton, the Texas attorney general, is expected to join Trump this afternoon, even after The New York Times released audio of Paxton complaining that Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas hurt Republican campaigns, including his own.PAXTON: So, to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention, it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s dropped. Right now? Yeah, not — not — not good.BRUCE: Paxton’s campaign claims the report is “manipulated nonsense,” adding “he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump.” Asked about Paxton’s comments, Trump said he hadn’t heard them, but insists his convention was a hit.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can tell you that the convention was amazing.BRUCE: The President hitting the road to boost Republicans in the final sprint to the midterms, urging voters to act like he’s on the ballot. But polls put Trump’s approval rating at or near record lows, in some cases as bad as in the aftermath of January 6. One new poll shows Trump’s approval among registered voters at 37 percent, the lowest presidential approval rating right before a midterm since 1990. Texas’s outgoing Republican Senator John Cornyn, with a blunt message.SENATOR JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): When the President wants to make all these elections about himself and, you know, vote like I’m on the ticket when his favorability ratings are not what they once were, that’s not a plus. That’s a negative.Bruce wrapped with more invective, greasing the skids to suppress GOP turnout: “With the war with Iran now in its eighth month and prices soaring, Americans are feeling the impact. That new poll shows that nearly two-thirds of registered voters rate the strength of the U.S. economy negatively. Trump’s own daughter-in-law now warning the war could hurt him.” Bruce wrapped with more invective, greasing the skids to suppress GOP turnout...“With the war with Iran now in its eighth month and prices soaring, Americans are feeling the impact. That new poll shows that nearly two-thirds of registered voters rate the strength of the U.S.… pic.twitter.com/w8QTqExOvH— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 1, 2026 Turning over to CBS, the show twice teased “newly leaked audio” that showed Paxton “is worried about the Republican poll numbers” and illustrated the GOP’s wider “concerns.”Featured co-host Vlad Duthiers had the setup for senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe:This is October 1, so the November elections are fast approaching, and President Trump is launching a midterm push for votes. He will be campaigning in Texas today for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton. He is locked in a very tight race, but new leaked audio reveals Paxton is worried about the Republicans’ poll numbersO’Keefe wasn’t as revelatory as Bruce, but viewers still received the gist: “Frustrated by his sinking poll numbers, President Trump is trying to convince voters to show up for Republicans even if they’re upset. He vowed to hold a campaign rally almost every single day between now and Election Day, but where he’s headed signals the trouble his party faces.” After CBS twice teased “newly leaked audio” that showed Paxton “is worried about the Republican poll numbers,” the show was not as revelatory as ABC, but you still got the gist as they boasted of widespread GOP candidates “struggling” pic.twitter.com/nz7eAURwmY— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 1, 2026 Like Bruce, O’Keefe pivoted in the middle to Paxton (click “expand”):O’KEEFE: Today, he’s headed back to Texas, where last month, he headlined an unprecedented midterm convention. But Texas GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton was caught on tape last week admitting the speeches and balloon drop didn’t help.PAXTON: When we did that convention, it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s dropped. Right now? Yeah, not — not — not good. I wish there was something we could do to turn that around, but obviously nothing.O’KEEFE: But, in public Wednesday, Paxton said the Republicans are in lockstep.PAXTON: Texas is the battleground.WOMAN IN THE CROWD: Yes, that’s right.[CHEERS]PAXTON: And Republicans are getting united.O’Keefe then delivered the line about GOP candidates “struggling” and discarded major economic announcements Trump made about Alaska and Iowa:Even before hitting the trail, the President again used the trappings of his office to shore up struggling Republican Senate candidates. Monday, he touted plans for a new steel plant in Iowa alongside candidate Ashley Hinson and, Wednesday, he announced plans for a new liquid natural gas plant in Alaska alongside Senator Dan Sullivan. Those are big economic deals in those states, but still several years away from happening.The CBS correspondent concluded by, again, like ABC, failing to remind viewers about the nature of how midterms often play out:The President also plans to rally in Durant, Oklahoma, today. Tomorrow night, it’s Mobile, Alabama. Saturday, it’s Dayton, Ohio. Monday, it’s Grand Island, Nebraska. All of these stops are in typically ruby-red states where Republicans are locked in closer-than-expected statewide contests, and the candidates don’t necessarily want to be seen alongside the President. Vlad, we’ll see who shows up.To see the relevant transcripts from October 1, click here (for ABC) and here (for CBS). October 1st, 2026 4:15 PM Curtis Houck 297063 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/emily-keegan/2026/10/01/erin-burnett-now-fears-protecting-elections-foreign-interference CNN via SnapStream In Tuesday’s OutFront, Erin Burnett once again dove into her, and the leftwing media’s, obsession with Russia’s apparent collusion in U.S. elections. With the November midterms now just weeks away, Burnett couldn’t resist piling on another claim: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s order to defend this election season from foreign interference was another ploy for Republicans to steal votes.It’s no secret the liberal media has had it out for Trump ever since he won in 2016. With Clinton’s loss being a hard pill to swallow, the Republican and Russia conspiracy was born. Instead of acting like a regular loser, however, Democrats fed Americans the fantastical narrative that “Russia hacked the election” and literally stole votes for the Republican Party.Burnett turned her segment into an electoral safeguard hate party when she bashed Hegseth’s order for the military to utilize intelligence and cyber capabilities to defend the election from foreign interference. Before her charade, Burnett admitted to this being “something the military has done in the past,” in which initiatives were rolled out in the past eight years during elections to counter foreign hackers.Pushing Burnett’s Russia conspiracy theory was frequent CNN guest Ty Cobb. When asked of Hegseth’s “different objective” that “is not a parallel to what's been done before,” the former Trump White House lawyer had some absurd findings. With Trump’s “hollowed out” cybersecurity and infrastructure security apparatus that “has been gutted,” Cobb put little faith in Hegseth’s ability to carry out such initiatives to combat foreign interference, and inferred that his role could potentially have something to do with voter meddling:This is not being done, though, as it has historically over our time to facilitate, you know, people being able to vote. This is being done solely so that they can say, we had people on site and we found these very concerning bots or, you know, potential international interference, you know, so that they can declare an emergency and perhaps seize ballots and seize voting machines.  Cobb continued to boil down the preventative cyber operations to Trump’s supposed electoral manipulation tactics:This is all part of the part and parcel of Trump's assault on elections from the post office, you know, to the cybersecurity infrastructure to the Justice Department's civil rights division, sending a 300 percent increase in poll watchers to the polls who are not there as they have been historically since the 60s, you know, to enable people to be allowed to exercise their vote.No, they're there with the hope that they can find something that provides a pretext or justification for a declared emergency that can be used to then interfere with the election. So, we're in trouble. We have to be vigilant, and people need to get out and vote in big numbers.We shouldn’t be surprised that Burnett was once again harping on this issue, especially since she was among the many liberal reporters and networks which insisted “Russia hacked the election.” 2017 - The biggest media hoax in history: "RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTION!" Every journalist and DOJ official in America repeated this lie thousands of times, to delegitimize Trump and prop up the fantasy that he was a Russian asset. No wonder nobody watches CNN or MSNBC anymore. https://t.co/9xdh8zeQ0J— Bill D'Agostino (@Banned_Bill) November 13, 2024 “Definitively, Russia hacked the election and Russia is doing it again now,” she once shouted into the camera.Obviously, the hoax was a direct retaliation of liberals not getting the result they wanted in 2016. We’ll have to wait and see if it happens again this year.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFrontSeptember 29, 202607:29:03 p.m. Eastern(...)ERIN BURNETT: Secretary Hegseth announced that he's directing the military to utilize intelligence and cyber capabilities to defend the election from foreign interference. Okay. Something the military has done in the past. But when you saw this, you saw something different. That Hegseth has a different objective here. That this is not a parallel to what's been done before.Can you explain?TY COBB (FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER): Certainly. You know, the cybersecurity and infrastructure security apparatus is one that Trump has hollowed out. I mean, you know, that it's been gutted. Uh, you know, this is the group that, that Hegseth is, you know, allegedly tasking, you know, with the substantial responsibilities.This is not being done, though, as it has historically over our time to facilitate, you know, people being able to vote. This is being done solely so that they can say, we had people on site and we found these very concerning bots or, you know, potential international interference, you know, so that they can declare an emergency and perhaps seize ballots and seize voting machines.This is all part of the part and parcel of Trump's assault on elections from the post office, you know, to the cybersecurity infrastructure to the Justice Department's civil rights division, sending a 300 percent increase in poll watchers to the polls who are not there as they have been historically since the 60s, you know, to enable people to be allowed to exercise their vote.No, they're there with the hope that they can find something that provides a pretext or justification for a declared emergency that can be used to then interfere with the election. So, we're in trouble. We have to be vigilant, and people need to get out and vote in big numbers.BURNETT: All right. Ty Cobb, thank you very much. It is always good to see you.(...) October 1st, 2026 4:10 PM Emily Keegan 297047 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/10/01/view-demands-politicians-actually-have-debates-midterms ABC via SnapStream In a rare moment of actual bipartisanship, The View cast shared their displeasure with how politicians on both sides of the aisle where refusing to do “the absolute bare minimum if you want to be in public service,” and debate each other. The only politician to be named for their refusal to debate their opponent, during their Thursday show, was Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly (FL). None of them were happy about any of it, a position they’ve been more or less consistent with.Filling in as moderator since Whoopi Goldberg was filming a movie and Joy Behar had dislocated her shoulder, Sunny Hostin noted: “We're just 33 days away from the midterm elections. 33 days, but a lot of candidates running in Senate, Congress, and governor's races are refusing to debate their opponents.” “Do you think debates matter anymore, ladies?” she asked the table.“Yes, they do. They absolutely matter,” Sara Haines immediately jumped in. She recalled how much of an effect the debate between JFK and Nixon played in 1960 depending if you saw it on TV:You're watching candidates and how they handle pressure and how they handle pushback on their ideas, how they defend their takes, and there's a gut reaction to it. It's why Kennedy beat Nixon. Like on the radio people thought that Nixon won. On the television because Nixon was sweating half his body weight, people were like, I don't know if that's my guy with big decisions. Let us make decisions as voters.“I'm really uncomfortable with not having debates,” proclaimed Ana Navarro. “And I just read that 36 governors are up for election and 21 of those races will not see a debate,” she decried.Giving her home state of Florida as an example, Navarro informed viewers that her district, District 27 (the race in which she electioneered for the Democrat earlier in the week) would not be having a debate despite how tight the race was. An actual non-partisan political discussion on The View.The View cast decries politicians on both sides who are refusing to debate their opponents ahead of the midterms, a demand they've repeatedly expressed over the years.Hostin wonder's if Biden performance has them scared:… pic.twitter.com/hF9COGQxcJ— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 1, 2026 Navarro said it was the same for the governor’s race, for which she had spoken with Democratic nominee David Jolly on her podcast. Jolly apparently told her that he didn’t want to debate Congressman Byron Donalds because he’s a “liar.”Haines would later circle back to Jolly’s argument with some pushback and argued that that should be the reason to debate someone:HAINES: Yeah, but also with - in response to what Ana is saying about someone who doesn't want to debate a liar, I think it's more important to debate a liar because people are smart. Viewers are smart. When you're putting it out there they're not dumb.NAVARRO: That’s what I said to him. I said, ‘well, if your opponent lies, I'd love to see you fact-check him on the spot.’Legacy co-host Sherri Shepherd was on hand and made the case that debates had been what put a candidate “over the top” by showing the people what they got. “Plus, you also have to see, some people, you got to see what their charisma is like. I got to see how you are. If you can think under pressure because you're going to be leading sir,” she said.“It just to me seems like the absolute bare minimum if you want to be in public service that you're going to show up and you’re going to answer tough questions,” declared co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin.For her part, Hostin floated the idea that politicians saw what happened to former President Joe Biden and were scared of a repeat. She proposed that if Biden had declined the debate, he would still be president. Shepherd and Farah Griffin didn’t buy that argument and said Biden would’ve been mocked (Click "expand"):HOSTIN: You know what? I bet one of the reasons why some people aren't debating is because of Biden's performance during that debate. Had Biden just stayed in the White House and said, ‘I'm not going to debate this man because he's morally bankrupt,’ Biden might be the president today.SHEPHERD: I don't know. I think some would have felt like, ‘why can't you debate him?’FARAH GRIFFIN: Or hiding.SHEPHERD: ‘If you know what you’re talking about, what are you hiding?’For what it’s worth, The View cast were making the same demands for debates during the 2022 midterms. “If you’re going to be an elected official, this is your job,” Goldberg said at the time.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:ABC’s The ViewOctober 1, 202611:18:27 a.m. EasternSUNNY HOSTIN: Welcome back. We're just 33 days away from the midterm elections. 33 days, but a lot of candidates running in Senate, Congress, and governor's races are refusing to debate their opponents. Hmm. Do you think debates matter anymore, ladies?SARA HAINES: Yes, they do. They absolutely matter.SHERRI SHEPHERD: Absolutely.HAINES: You're watching candidates and how they handle pressure and how they handle pushback on their ideas, how they defend their takes, and there's a gut reaction to it. It's why Kennedy beat Nixon. Like on the radio people thought that Nixon won. On the television because Nixon was sweating half his body weight, people were like, I don't know if that's my guy with big decisions.SHEPHARD: Yes.HAINES: Let us make decisions as voters.ANA NAVARRO: I'm really uncomfortable with not having debates. So, in Florida, there is -- polls are saying there's a tight governor's race and there are no debates. In my congressional district there are no debates again for another very tight race. And I just read that 36 governors are up for election and 21 of those races will not see a debate.I interviewed David Jolly who is the candidate, the Democratic nominee for governor in Florida yesterday on my podcast, and he is the one that declined the debate and he said - And I asked him. I said, ‘why did you do this? I want to see a debate.’ And he said, ‘because you can't debate a liar and when you debate a liar and they lie and they lie and they lie, you know, then that becomes the truth.’SHEPHERD: I understand that but then I don't get to hear what he says. And, you know, sometime when it gets this close it's a debate that might take it over the top. Plus, you also have to see, some people, you got to see what their charisma is like. I got to see how you are. If you can think under pressure because you're going to be leading sir.And also Gavin Newsom, let him do a debate. I could watch Gavin Newsom debate all day, long! Have you seen Gavin Newsom?NAVARRO: But honey, he's not up for election.[Crosstalk]SHEPHERD: I wish he was. I can still vote in California.ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: It just to me seems like the absolute bare minimum if you want to be in public service that you're going to show up and you’re going to answer tough questions.Ads tell us nothing. Ads are message tested, focus grouped and liked catered to a specific audience. A debate reveals character, quickness, actual dealt of like policy and plans. And it's a shame that we're not seeing more of them.HOSTIN: You know what? I bet one of the reasons why some people aren't debating is because of Biden's performance during that debate. Had Biden just stayed in the White House and said, ‘I'm not going to debate this man because he's morally bankrupt,’ Biden might be the president today.SHEPHERD: I don't know. I think some would have felt like, ‘why can't you debate him?’FARAH GRIFFIN: Or hiding.SHEPHERD: ‘If you know what you’re talking about, what are you hiding?’[Crosstalk]HAINES: Yeah, but also with - in response to what Ana is saying about someone who doesn't want to debate a liar, I think it's more important to debate a liar because people are smart. Viewers are smart. When you're putting it out there -SHEPHERD: We can see it.HAINES: - they're not dumb.NAVARRO: That’s what I said to him. I said, ‘well, if your opponent lies, I'd love to see you fact-check him on the spot.’SHEPHERD: A lot of people don't have time to research all the people who are running. The policy.HOSTIN: You get information that way. We'll be right back. October 1st, 2026 3:28 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 297062 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2026/10/01/soros-funded-fake-news-op-courier-newsroom-weaponizing A leftist fake news outfit founded by Democratic activist Tara McGowan and funded by George Soros is launching a major Big Tech scheme to dominate the political information sphere ahead of the midterm elections. YouTube Surprisingly, the damning news was broken by none other than NewsGuard, another notorious media outfit that MRC has exposed for using its ratings system as a cudgel to silence right-leaning media. Courier Newsroom, which has been fueled with at least $20 million between 2021 and 2023 alone by Soros, is making a “major bet” on weaponizing TikTok in order to sway votes.Specifically, NewsGuard wrote that “Across 21 TikTok accounts — one for each state that Courier covers, plus a nationally focused account — Courier has generated an audience of 4.3 million followers and has collectively received 665.5 million likes on its videos.” Courier became infamous for spreading mass amounts of false information in past elections to manipulate voters. The national TikTok account for the group, which boasts 3.7 million followers, boasts a significantly higher following “than @washingtonpost’s 2.1 million and almost as many as @nytimes’s 3.9 million.” If there were any questions about Courier’s motives, McGowan once spewed in her Twitter bio: “[W]eaponizing truth to get Trump TFO.” McGowan, in a 2019 internal memo, explicitly outlined how Courier’s role was to help Democrats get elected.Apparently, the scheme is working. As NewsGuard concluded, “Courier is using its burgeoning TikTok audience as a selling point. In a February 2026 news release, Courier called itself ‘one of the largest news brands on TikTok in the United States.’” NewsGuard even went as far as to dub Courier as “pink slime,” which is a colloquial term used to describe “sites that present themselves as professional news outlets but are secretly backed by partisan groups with a clear though undisclosed agenda.”  Courier Newsroom Founder Tara McGowan Here’s a rule of thumb: If you’re taking $20 million from the most notorious billionaire in American politics, “partisan” becomes a euphemism by default. Soros’s major monetary connection to Courier is especially revealing in light of the fact that the billionaire himself had already poured $103.3 million to swing the political pendulum towards Democrats in this year’s pool of congressional and gubernatorial races, cementing  himself — AGAIN — as a top midterm donor. Until recently, Soros was the top donor overall.Courier already drew national attention for-cohosting a massive anti-Trump boycott of his State of the Union Address, featuring prominent speakers like actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo; lawmakers like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and media figures like former CNN anchor Jim Acosta.To combat Courier’s efforts, MRC is listing every one of Courier’s fake news outfits below hyperlinked with each’s own TikTok account. In addition, MRC is listing each state Courier’s tentacles have reached to help American voters identify and repudiate this Soros-backed scam op to manipulate the elections:The Copper Courier (Arizona)Dogwood (Virginia) The Keystone (Pennsylvania)UpNorthNews (Wisconsin)The’Gander (Michigan)Floricua (Florida)Iowa Starting Line (Iowa)Cardinal & Pine (North Carolina)The Nevadan (Nevada)Granite Post (New Hampshire)Courier Texas (Texas)CourierCalifornia (California)CourierColorado (Colorado)CourierGeorgia (Georgia)HellbenderNewsroom (Kentucky)CourierMinnesota (Minnesota)CourierNebraska (Nebraska)CourierNewMexico (New Mexico)CourierNewYork (New York)UtahJunction (Utah) October 1st, 2026 2:10 PM Joseph Vazquez 297060 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/cnsnews/craig-bannister/2026/10/01/small-business-health-cash-flow-improve-q3-us-chamber Small business confidence improved in the third quarter as owners reported stable business health and greater comfort with their cash flow, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported Wednesday, releasing the results of the latest Justworks and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index."The small business economy remains remarkably steady," the Chamber’s Senior Vice President of Small Business Policy, Tom Sullivan, said in a press release announcing the results:"Owners are telling us their businesses are healthy, cash flow remains solid, and many continue to plan for growth. But they're also clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. Inflation continues to affect nearly every aspect of running a business, from payroll and benefits to long-term planning."At 70.5, the third quarter 2026 index (Q3) is up four points from the previous quarter’s mark of 66.5 and just 1.5 points short of the record high of 72.0 set a year earlier, in the third quarter of 2025.Key economic results from the Q3 survey include:Seven in 10 small businesses describe their business health as being either “good” or “very good.”The share of owners rating their business health as “very good” increased eight points to 35%.72% say they’re comfortable with their cash flow.Inflation remains the top challenge facing small businesses, cited by 54% of owners.62% expect revenue to increase over the next year.38% plan to increase investment and 36% anticipate adding staff.The survey also found that seven in 10 small businesses now offer at least one benefit:46% offer health insurance (up from 41% from a year ago).40% offer paid vacation (up from 30%).31% offer dental and vision coverage (up from 21%).27% offer retirement plans (up from 22%).75% of small businesses invest in employee training/growth opportunities.The Q3 2026 national survey of 759 small business owners and operators age 18 and above was conducted online August 4-18, 2026 by Ipsos. October 1st, 2026 1:54 PM Craig Bannister 297061 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2026/10/01/pbs-holds-cozy-book-chat-liberal-fox-news-host-while-ignoring On Monday, Geoff Bennett of the PBS News Hour interviewed Jessica Tarlov, the sole liberal panelist on the Fox News Channel’s political-comedic chat show The Five, on her new book I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, begging the question: Has the News Hour ever hosted a conservative regular from “The Five” to talk about a book they’ve written? No.Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: Jessica Tarlov has made a career out of disagreeing, often while being outnumbered. As the liberal voice on Fox News's The Five,"she spends her days debating people who see the world very differently than she does. And in her new book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, she argues that disagreement doesn't have to mean disdain, and that knowing how to talk to people across political divides is a skill we need now more than ever…..They don't feel that need at PBS. They might have some pseudo-conservative David Brooks types, but not the truly oppositional kind. Bennett did extract a couple of interesting thoughts from the interview.PBS News host Geoff Bennett: "What do you understand differently now about conservatives?" Fox 'Five' co-host Jessica Tarlov: "They are not taking every bit of the story as seriously as the left is, and it is allowing them to focus on what they see as the bigger picture." pic.twitter.com/PxYOpAZd4a— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) October 1, 2026Bennett: What do you understand differently now about conservatives or a conservative viewpoint that you didn't fully grasp when you started at Fox?Jessica Tarlov: .….it's frustrating for liberals, but I have a front-row seat to the fact that they don't take politics as seriously as liberals….they are not taking every bit of the story as seriously as the left is, and it is allowing them to focus on what they see as the bigger picture or the bigger project. And I didn't understand that before I started working for them. I thought that they were actually just deeply unserious about politics. They're just longer-term-minded.Bennett: You're fairly tough on Democrats in this book. You say that they too often don't really inhabit conservative spaces, that they can be scolding, that the party has lost some of the joy and cultural connection that politics requires. What do you think Democrats misunderstand about the people they need to win back? Tarlov: That those people are also not taking politics as seriously as they are, that they are consuming media that they are oftentimes not interested in engaging in. That was one of the main findings of every autopsy there was from the 2024 election...Returning to the question about the News Hour hosting conservative books authors: Signs point to no. A Nexis search indicates that neither Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino, or Jesse Watters, three full-time conservative "Five" hosts with books under their belt, have appeared on the News Hour in any capacity, besides being the subject of brief, sometimes derogatory clips.Liberal columnist Juan Williams, who left The Five in 2021, did appear on the News Hour on January 20, 2025 to discuss New Prize For These Eyes: The Rise of America`s Second Civil Rights Movement, a sequel to his famous 1987 book Eyes on the Prize, which was accompanied by a PBS documentary. Side note: Williams was fired from NPR in 2010 for daring to appear on Fox News! Of course, television personalities are free to turn down interviews if they have other priorities or suspect a hostile greeting. But the issue goes deeper than individual choices made by particular talk show hosts. PBS, which until the summer of 2025 was taxpayer funded, as was NPR, has a history of ignoring political books and memoirs by conservatives while promoting books by liberal journalists, like ABC Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl’s fourth anti-Trump book, NBC News reporter Mike Hixenbough’s portentously titled “They Came for the Schools -- One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms,” and an homage to Democratic politician and race activist Jesse Jackson by CNN host Abby Phillip.A transcript is available, click “Expand.”PBS News Hour9/28/267:47:12 p.m.Geoff Bennett: Jessica Tarlov has made a career out of disagreeing, often while being outnumbered.As the liberal voice on FOX News' "The Five," she spends her days debating people who see the world very differently than she does. And in her new book, "I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends," she argues that disagreement doesn't have to mean disdain, and that knowing how to talk to people across political divides is a skill we need now more than ever.I recently spoke with her.Jessica Tarlov, welcome to the "News Hour."Jessica Tarlov, Author, "I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends": Life aspiration fulfilled now to be here. Thank you for inviting me.Geoff Bennett: Terrific. Well, happy to make it happen.So, look, on "The Five," you are the liberal voice at this table where you are outnumbered four to one. What has that taught you about the difference between winning an argument and persuading someone?Jessica Tarlov: It's taught me a lot about patience, first and foremost and one of the big philosophies of the book, which is knowing when to listen and when to talk.And being able to engage oftentimes silently as someone is doing their thing and putting some facts or perspective out into the ether that I vehemently disagree with and that I'm jonesing to pick apart has made it easier for me to be able to do this job, to understand people that think differently than me, and to be able to rebut it, I think, more effectively.So, persuasion, very definition of what that means, for me, this job is about opening people's minds to the idea that there's an alternative way of looking at a certain subject. And the listening part of it is the crucial component.Geoff Bennett: What do you understand differently now about conservatives or a conservative viewpoint that you didn't fully grasp when you started at FOX?Jessica Tarlov: A few things.I grew up in New York City, a very liberal family, school with all liberals. I didn't spend a lot of time with conservatives until I went to college, which I think is a lot of people's experiences who grow up in these kinds of enclaves.And having exposure and working closely with people whose conservative values are rooted in the way they grew up, in their religion, traditions passed down across generations has been illuminating for me. It hits different if you're talking about something like reproductive health care and the person you're debating or even just chatting with is a pro-life person because of their religion.And you also can't win that argument in the same way that you might be able to with someone else. Working with so many veterans, for instance. I have a new take on gun culture from being around people who grew up with guns, hunters, conservationists, all giving me a bigger perspective, I think, on the way that the country works. So that's one aspect of it.And then the other is that -- and it's frustrating for liberals, but I have a front-row seat to the fact that they don't take politics as seriously as liberals. And I know that that is this massive land mine for people on the left, where you just say, how is this possible that you don't care, right, or what you're allowing to slide, and how can you just sit there and accept something like this?If you're -- we're debating immigration, for instance, and we're talking about real tragedies like what happened to Alex Pretti or Renee Good, and somebody says, well, it the larger picture is what matters to me, and we're moving in the right direction. They shouldn't have been obstructing traffic. Or this is what happens when you leave the border open during the Biden administration.And that's hugely annoying to me and frustrating. But they are not taking every bit of the story as seriously as the left is, and it is allowing them to focus on what they see as the bigger picture or the bigger project. And I didn't understand that before I started working for them. I thought that they were actually just deeply unserious about politics. They're just longer-term-minded.Geoff Bennett: You're fairly tough on Democrats in this book. You say that they too often don't really inhabit conservative spaces, that they can be scolding, that the party has lost some of the joy and cultural connection that politics requires.What do you think Democrats misunderstand about the people they need to win back?Jessica Tarlov: That those people are also not taking politics as seriously as they are, that they are consuming media that they are oftentimes not interested in engaging in. That was one of the main findings of every autopsy there was from the 2024 election.And you see Democrats dabbling more showing up. A lot of them are coming on FOX News. And the way that I found that politics and the politics of persuasion works is when you are in a long-term relationship with the people that you're talking to and with their audiences, and when then they can really feel like you're trying to be part of their world. And most of the time, they want you to show up and not actually be talking about politics, which we're still not great at. Democrats, we like football too, and all of the stuff that we get made fun of. But showing up on things like "College GameDay" and making sure that you're going to those events, you see the reception that like a Wes Moore or a Josh Shapiro gets when they go out and do those kinds of things.And I think that is still missing from the recipe. I worry for the midterms, even though the polling looks great at this moment, and I know the country is in tremendous economic crisis, and folks, they know what it costs to fill up their tank, they know what groceries cost, but the results won't necessarily be an affirmation of the Democratic Party as a great option.It might just be that the other side looked that much worse at this moment. And I wanted the book to emphasize a path forward for the party, which I have been thinking a lot about in terms of policies that will move us forward, but also what leadership looks like and joy.Geoff Bennett: You write about the emotional toll of being on the receiving end of attacks from President Trump. Is there a point at which engagement stops being worthwhile?Jessica Tarlov: Well, engaging with him, I think, is not worthwhile. And that is definitely my policy. There's nothing really to say when the leader of the free world thinks that he should be watching "The Five", instead of overseeing the dropping of bunker-buster bombs on the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex, which is when he decided that he really needed to tell me how much he hated my jittery presentation.But the big lesson that I took from the several times that he's come after me, or viewers, or when I get criticism even from people that I know in my real life is that oftentimes they're going to be focusing on the style of how you're doing something, like, I would have done it this way, or you're too much of this, you're not enough of that, you're unendurable voice, which was I think it must have been Steven Cheung who wrote that, because it doesn't sound like Trump.Geoff Bennett: The White House communications director.Jessica Tarlov: Yes.But they focus on your style when they can't deal with your substance. And that has made me a lot stronger in my passion for what I do and the kind of advocacy that I feel like I'm putting out there to an audience that might not necessarily have a ton of access to someone who thinks like me.And I wanted to make sure that that was an important thread of the book, because I especially want folks and younger women to understand the workplace can be quite rough-and-tumble. And people are going to criticize you and come after you. And if you can find a way to internally process that and unpack what their criticism actually means, you can succeed and just feel much better about yourself on the other end.But it's also OK to cry, which I have in the book too.Vulnerability matters.Geoff Bennett: Yes. The book is "I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends."Jessica Tarlov, it's great to have you here.Jessica Tarlov: Yes, thank you so much. October 1st, 2026 1:08 PM Clay Waters 297052 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/01/stewart-laments-being-called-socialist-wanting-socialized-health Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart welcomed Iowa Democratic Senate Josh Turek to Wednesday’s episode of The Weekly Show podcast, where he lamented that people call him a socialist for wanting socialized health care. During their discussion Stewart and Turek would make several misleading claims about the nature of private health care in Iowa.Stewart wondered, “What do you think has allowed this inequality to take shape? Because I think most people would agree the economy is at the very least unbalanced that we have for too many years favored investment and capital over labor.”Before Turek would answer, Stewart added, “And, you know, now the buzzword on, on the right is, oh, so you're, you know, you want socialism. Well, no, I want to stop privatizing things that don't work well in a market system like health care, like Medicare, like all those things that are getting ruined by privatization and insurance, and all those different markets and rebalance so that labor gets a fairer shake. The same shake that money gets.” Jon Stewart doesn't want you calling him a socialist even if he supports socialized medicine, "And, you know, now the buzzword on, on the right is, oh, so you're, you know, you want socialism. Well, no, I want to stop privatizing things that don't work well in a market system… pic.twitter.com/zo84RMxoNm— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 1, 2026 Iowa is just one of 41 states plus D.C. that has some form of private sector involvement with Medicaid, but Turek agreed with Stewart’s framing, “Yeah, 100 percent agree. I mean, the move is always the same whether it's education or health care. It is defund it to the point where it appears like it no longer works. So then we can privatize it so that it doesn't function, and we can make millions and billions of dollars in profits off the backs of the most vulnerable."Stewart was a big fan of that answer, “This, this is such an important cycle. I really, I want to slow down for a moment because I want to have the audience really understand it is a cynical cycle, but it is an important one. So, so walk us through a little bit, your knowledge of, you know, the medical cycle and how that is, how that is done.”Turek replied by giving his campaign origin story, “So, for example, in Iowa, the privatization of Medicaid, which was the reason why I got involved in this, you know, as I said, I was providing power wheelchairs for individuals with progressive conditions, and over and over and over every day I would hear from these folks saying, ‘Josh, I can't get a direct care worker or I can't get a wheelchair.’ And I would say, ‘Why is this taking place?' Well, the privatization of Medicaid. And then I found out we had never had a permanent disabled member ever in the history of the state. Even though we're a state of 150 years and so that's what that sort of inspired me to run.He also claimed, “And so what takes place, you know, before Medicaid was privatized in Iowa, you would go and talk to any person with the disability. They would say it wasn't perfect, but it was functioning. Now, after we have privatized it, we've got 27,000 disabled individuals in Iowa that are on wait lists. The longest wait list currently is nine years for care. Denial rates skyrocketed—”Stewart then interrupted to simply yell, “Holy shit! Nine years?”Turek then doubled down, “Nine years, that's the intellectual disability waiver.”It is unclear where Turek got his numbers. The actual number is closer to five years. It is unlikely that Stewart and Turek would accept a five-year wait list as a consolation, but blaming it on the private sector is a wild non-sequitur. Maine is one of the few states without private sector involvement in Medicaid, and its wait list for the intellectual disability waiver can be as high as eight years.The conceit of socialized health care is that the government has an endless money pit to spend on health care while the private sector will always prioritize profits. However, even in Iowa, Medicaid eligibility is still determined by the state, and excessively long waiting lists are a common feature of countries with socialized health care.  Here is a transcript for the September 30 show:Comedy Central The Weekly Show9/30/2026JON STEWART: What do you think has allowed this inequality to take shape? Because I think most people would agree the economy is at the very least unbalanced that we have for too many years favored investment and capital over labor.And, you know, now the buzzword on, on the right is, oh, so you're, you know, you want socialism. Well, no, I want to stop privatizing things that don't work well in a market system like health care, like Medicare, like all those things that are getting ruined by privatization and insurance, and all those different markets and rebalance so that labor gets a fairer shake. The same shake that money gets.JOSH TUREK: Yeah, 100 percent agree. I mean, the move is always the same whether it's education or health care. It is defund it to the point where it appears like it no longer works. So then we can privatize it so that it doesn't function, and we can make millions and billions of dollars in profits off the backs of the most vulnerable.STEWART: This, this is such an important cycle. I really, I want to slow down for a moment because I want to have the audience really understand it is a cynical cycle, but it is an important one. So, so walk us through a little bit, your knowledge of, you know, the medical cycle and how that is, how that is done.TUREK: Yeah. So, for example, in Iowa, the privatization of Medicaid, which was the reason why I got involved in this, you know, as I said, I was providing power wheelchairs for individuals with progressive conditions, and over and over and over every day I would hear from these folks saying, “Josh, I can't get a direct care worker or I can't get a wheelchair.”And I would say, "Why is this taking place?’ Well, the privatization of Medicaid. And then I found out we had never had a permanent disabled member ever in the history of the state. Even though we're a state of 150 years and so that's what that sort of inspired me to run.And so what takes place, you know, before Medicaid was privatized in Iowa, you would go and talk to any person with the disability. They would say it wasn't perfect, but it was functioning. Now, after we have privatized it, we've got 27,000 disabled individuals in Iowa that are on wait lists. The longest wait list currently is nine years for care. Denial rates skyrocketed—STEWART: Holy shit!TUREK: Yeah, can you imagine if that's your son—STEWART: Nine years?TUREK: Nine years, that's the intellectual disability waiver.STEWART: For someone struggling with this.  October 1st, 2026 12:46 PM Alex Christy 297059 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2026/10/01/top-abc-cbs-morning-shows-duck-foiled-anti-semitic-terror-attack Screenshot via NBC/Snapstream On Wednesday night, the Texas Department of Public Safety revealed it had arrested a man who had planned to attack the Texas State Capitol because of his hatred for Jews, specifically the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the boogeyman organization pilloried by the left (and, increasingly, on the right) as a shadowy group of Jews controlling U.S. politicians on behalf of Israel.Sadly, this foiled hate crime — which the suspect said had to happen because “these people have to be exterminated” — was of no interest on Thursday to the lead morning shows of ABC and CBS, Good Morning America and CBS Mornings.NBC’s Today had a 35-second news brief in the second hour. Co-host Savannah Guthrie shared: This was the only coverage on any of the Big Three networks this morning about the foiled terror attack on the Texas State Capitol by a man inspired by the hate against AIPAC and said, “these people have to be exterminated.”NBC’s Today had a 35-second news brief pic.twitter.com/13PLVooOlx— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 1, 2026 A man was arrested yesterday for allegedly plotting an attack at the Texas State Capitol. 40-year-old Benny Caldera Jr. was taken into custody early yesterday morning. Authorities say they received a tip on Tuesday about an individual planning a violent attack today in Austin. According to the arrest documents, Caldera told a friend that he was very angry at the Arab — American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and said, “these people have to be exterminated.” The Capitol will be open today as scheduled, but with an increased police presence.As of this blog’s publication, it fetched coverage on the 9:00 a.m. Eastern hour of ABC News Live, CNN Headline Express (which airs in the 5:00 a.m. Eastern hour), the Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, NewsNation’s Morning in America, our friends at Newsmax2’s First Edition, NBC News NOW’s Morning News NOW and Current.MS NOW repeatedly covered on Thursday morning the latest on the ICE officer-involved shooting back on September 20, but saw no reason to mention what was also taking place in the Texas capital city.Along with the mention on its streaming channel, ABC News was definitely aware of this plot, as its overnight show Good Morning America First Look had both a tease and news brief about it.Co-host Hanna Batta had the 20-second brief, which was in and of itself absurd because she completely ducked the clear angle about hating Jews and made it as vague as possible: ABC’s middle-of-the-night show ‘Good Morning America First Look’ (which we don’t usually count at the MRC) had a brief. Co-host Hanna Battah omitted the suspect’s anti-Semitic motivations.No, it was b/c he was “angry over the direction of the country & the Palestinian cause” pic.twitter.com/sK7jjnkz2Z— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 1, 2026 Authorities in Texas say they foiled a plot to attack the state capitol in Austin. They arrested a man who allegedly told a friend he was going to shoot up the Capitol and had guns and ammo. They say Benny Caldera Jr. was angry over the direction of the country and the Palestinian cause. It’s not clear if he has issued a plea yet.Here’s more on the arrest from an NBC Dallas-Fort Worth article cross-posted at NBCNews.com:At around 3 a.m. Wednesday, DPS SWAT arrested 40-year-old Benny Caldera Jr. at his residence in Converse, about 15 miles northeast of downtown San Antonio, Texas DPS said.(....)Caldera’s friend told officers that Caldera said, “I love you, if you don’t see me again,” and explained that, “I am going to the Capitol and I am going to shoot it up,” according to arrest documents.(....)Bexar County court records show that Caldera was previously charged with unlicensed carrying of a weapon in November 2023.Instead of finding a few seconds for a brief about this, ABC’s Good Morning America had a full story pouting over new work requirements to receive federal benefits as another case of heartless conservatives. CBS Mornings, meanwhile, told viewers about a pair of Elvis sunglasses being up for auction and then how men can help with the “mental workload” of home life.In other words, classic script of men are clueless chuds.To see the relevant transcripts from October 1, click “expand.”ABC’s Good Morning America First Look October 1, 20263:30 a.m. Central [TEASE][ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Developing Story; Attack Plot Arrest]SOPHIE FLAY: Also developing right now, the alleged plot to attack the Texas State Capitol and the arrest now made.(....)3:37 a.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Attack Plot Arrest] HANNAH BATTA: Authorities in Texas say they foiled a plot to attack the state capitol in Austin. They arrested a man who allegedly told a friend he was going to shoot up the Capitol and had guns and ammo. They say Benny Caldera Jr. was angry over the direction of the country and the Palestinian cause. It’s not clear if he has issued a plea yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NBC’s Today October 1, 20268:04 a.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: News at 8; Texas Man Accused in Plot to Attack Capitol]SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: A man was arrested yesterday for allegedly plotting an attack at the Texas State Capitol. 40-year-old Benny Caldera Jr. was taken into custody early yesterday morning. Authorities say they received a tip on Tuesday about an individual planning a violent attack today in Austin. According to the arrest documents, Caldera told a friend that he was very angry at the Arab — American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and said, “these people have to be exterminated.” The Capitol will be open today as scheduled, but with an increased police presence. October 1st, 2026 12:22 PM Curtis Houck 297058 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/justine-brooke-murray/2026/10/01/uk-lets-you-take-bereavement-killing-your-own-kids Imagine being able to casually tell your boss that you need to get ahead of the game and schedule bereavement time off because you PLAN on your otherwise perfectly healthy children “randomly” dropping dead two Mondays from now at approximately 10:15am… If your boss asks how you know, and you admit it’s because you plan on “un-aliving” them, they are legally forced to nod along if they don’t want to be sued… At least that’s the new reality in the United Kingdom, if the child you kill is pre-born. Employers in the U.K. must now give parents bereavement time off after they kill their own babies via abortion. pic.twitter.com/CSXlfZew1L— Justine Brooke Murray (@Justine_Brooke) September 29, 2026 Beginning in April, 2027, the UK government will force all employers to grant parents grieving an early pregnancy loss up to two weeks off work, even if they’re the ones responsible for aborting the baby. It means they finally admit abortion takes human lives, but those lives only matter to the extent their killings can be used for a free vacation.  October 1st, 2026 11:49 AM Justine Brooke Murray 297057 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/cnsnews/craig-bannister/2026/10/01/ivy-league-trustees-overwhelming-identify-and-donate Trustees who identify as Democrats greatly outnumber those who identify as Republicans at the nation’s Ivy League schools and, as a result, Democrats receive far more money in political donations from members of these governing bodies than do Republicans, a study by the Buckley Institute reveals.“The trustees have ultimate fiduciary responsibility for their respective universities, hire and fire the university president, and have oversight over the faculty, among other responsibilities,” Buckley Institute noted in a press release stressing the importance of the study’s findings.The study identified the political parties of 233 trustees from the eight Ivy League universities:BrownColumbiaCornellDartmouthHarvardUniversity of Pennsylvania (Penn)PrincetonYaleDemocrat trustees outnumber Republican trustees six to one at Ivy League schools, as fully two-thirds (67%) of trustees from these governing boards identify as Democrats, while just one in nine (11%) identify as Republican. Another 22% are unaffiliated with either party.Yale has no Republican trustees. And, while Penn’s governing board has the highest share of Republicans (25.8%), they’re still outnumbered by Democrats by about two to one.Political donations by Ivy League trustees also greatly favor Democrats over Republicans, the study found. Nearly twice as many Democrat trustees as Republican trustees made political donations. However, of the total dollar amount of contributions by all Ivy League trustees (including unaffiliated), Democrats’ receipts trounced Republicans’ by almost four to one ($85.5 million to $22.4 million).The imbalanced political makeup of Ivy League trustees is particularly striking, given that Gallup polling finds that roughly the same percentage of Americans identify as Democrats as identify as Republicans (around 30%).The mission of the Buckley Institute, named in honor of iconic conservative commentator and author William F. Buckley, Jr., is “to promote intellectual diversity and freedom of speech at Yale University,” the Institute’s website explains:“We aim to foster robust and open debate, provide a home for enlightened conservative thought, and expose students to often-unvoiced views. We believe that genuine intellectual diversity is essential for advancing critical inquiry and seek to challenge ideological complacency wherever it exists.”William F. Buckley, Jr. graduated from Yale in 1950. A year later, he published his first book, “God and Man at Yale,” exposing the intellectual conformity and dogmatism of Yale’s increasingly secularist, left-wing climate, the website explains.Read the Buckley Institute’s full report, “The Echo Chamber on Top: Governance in the Ivy League,” here. October 1st, 2026 11:46 AM Craig Bannister 297056 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-spinnato/2026/10/01/odonnell-compares-gop-senator-drunk-joe-mccarthy-insists MS NOW/SnapStream On Wednesday night in the world of The Last Word’s Lawrence O’Donnell, the MS NOW nighttime host went after Republican Senator Eric Schmitt after Tuesday’s Jack Smith hearing and compared the senator, “at best,” to the “equivalent of a Drunk Joe McCarthy.” He did not stop there, and later insisted President Trump had dementia.O’Donnell began by mocking Schmitt for his now-viral questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith: “In my years working in the Senate on two different Senate committees and observing the Senate, I have never seen a humiliation like this.”He then connected back to former Senator Joe McCarthy, who he insisted was “generations before my time,” and said, “No one ever expected to see that kind of thing in the Senate again”  On Wednesday night in Lawrence O’Donnell land, the MS NOW host yelled at GOP Senator Eric Schmitt and insinuated he was drunk at the Jack Smith hearing, as O'Donnell called him “the equivalent of a drunk Joe McCarthy."O’Donnell then moved to declare Trump has dementia before he… pic.twitter.com/xjygFENzy6— Nick (@nspin310) October 1, 2026 Furthermore, he declared, “But Eric Schmitt is the Senate's new Joe McCarthy.”O’Donnell added, “Joe McCarthy was drunk. What is Eric Schmitt’s excuse?” He then insisted Schmitt might have been drunk while preparing for the hearing:When did he make the decision to use this unvetted material? Was it after dinner the night before the hearing? What did he have to drink at dinner? How much did he have to drink at dinner, if anything? And I ask this question, mindful of the Senate precedent that such stupidity and lies and poison were only pushed by a drunk, out-of-control Republican senator in the 1950s whose life then drowned and ended in his own alcoholism.He stopped himself and said, “Eric Schmitt didn't look drunk in that hearing,” before he added, “so maybe that was Eric Schmitt at his very best, meaning Eric Schmitt at his very best is the equivalent of a drunk Joe McCarthy at his worst.”O’Donnell turned away from his Schmitt attacks to target instead President Trump, and insisted Trump comments suggesting Republican “numbers are through the roof” and they “should win” the midterms, meant he had Dementia:We know Eric Schmitt’s boss, Donald Trump, was not drunk today because we know he's never been drunk. So, something else would have to explain why he said this today.For context, in 2018, Trump jokingly said he’s never drunk alcohol, as he stated, “I can honestly say I’ve not had a beer in my life. That's one of my only good traits. I don’t drink.”Nevertheless, O’Donnell continued and exclaimed that Trump must be either a pathological liar or have dementia:That could just be his lifelong pathological lying. It could be dementia. And he might believe it completely in dementia. I leave it to you to decide which is worse: pathological lying or dementia at this point in Donald Trump's case.A reminder that MS NOW featured O’Donnell in an advertisement earlier this year, where they claim to “deliver journalism” that “strengthens our democracy.”The transcript is below. Click "expand":MS NOW’s The Last WordOctober 1, 202610:05:37 PM Eastern(...)LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: In my years working in the Senate on two different Senate committees and observing the Senate, I have never seen a humiliation like this. The ravings of Senator Joe McCarthy were long before my time, generations before my time. No one ever expected to see that kind of thing in the Senate again. But Eric Schmitt is the Senate's new Joe McCarthy. Joe McCarthy was drunk. What is Eric Schmitt’s excuse? When did he make the decision to use this unvetted material? Was it after dinner the night before the hearing? What did he have to drink at dinner? How much did he have to drink at dinner, if anything? And I ask this question, mindful of the Senate precedent that such stupidity and lies and poison were only pushed by a drunk, out-of-control Republican senator in the 1950s whose life then drowned and ended in his own alcoholism. Eric Schmitt didn't look drunk in that hearing, so maybe that was Eric Schmitt at his very best, meaning Eric Schmitt at his very best is the equivalent of a drunk Joe McCarthy at his worst.We know Eric Schmitt’s boss, Donald Trump, was not drunk today because we know he's never been drunk. So, something else would have to explain why he said this today.PRESIDENT TRUMP: I mean, our numbers are through the roof. We've never had - The best numbers in the history of our country. We should win.O’DONNELL: That could just be his lifelong pathological lying. It could be dementia. And he might believe it completely in dementia. I leave it to you to decide which is worse: pathological lying or dementia at this point in Donald Trump's case. (...) October 1st, 2026 11:28 AM Nicholas Spinnato 297055 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/10/01/de-niro-joins-kimmel-recall-favorite-anti-trump-insults Actor Robert De Niro joined ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday in the character of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in what was supposed to be a satirical look at the relationship between the FCC and Kimmel but was actually just an opportunity for the duo to recall some of their favorite anti-Trump insults.At one point in his monologue, De Niro “surprised” Kimmel by coming out on stage and portraying Carr as the head of some Mafia speech police. However, it quickly became clear the point was just to rehash some of Kimmel’s more famous insults as De Niro recalled, “Let's see. It says we have 192 instances of you poking fun at the president's appearance. Did you say the president looks like a Macy's parade balloon filled with cottage cheese?” Robert De Niro appeared with Jimmy Kimmel last night in the role of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, which was really just an opportunity to retell some of Kimmel's favorite insults, "Let's see. It says we have 192 instances of you poking fun at the president's appearance. Did you say… pic.twitter.com/vYzejbebjz— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 1, 2026 Fake Carr also wondered, “Did you say the scarf the president was wearing brought out the color in his neck vagina?” and “Do you recall referring to the commander-in-chief as Mar-a-Lardo, Benito Gasolini, Captain Cankle-roo?”Kimmel then inquired, “Cankle-roo, yeah. What is the point of this? I don’t—”De Niro then pushed Kimmel’s face to the side as he declared, “Did I tell you it was your turn to talk, numb nuts? You speak when I tell you to speak and otherwise you shut the [bleep] up.”Suddenly against swearing, Kimmel retorted, “Hold on a second. You cannot use language like that on television. There are rules, you know.”Keeping with the mob boss act, De Niro replied by gesturing at sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, “I run the FCC. Who's going to stop me? Who? Him? Don't get involved. Now, let's see. What else do we have here?”Getting back to the Trump insults, De Niro recalled, “Did you say that President Trump has touched more women than the music of Adele?”Kimmel insisted, “Come on. Now, you—you have to admit that's pretty funny, right?”De Niro then smacked Kimmel again before threatening, “You're doing it again. Am I going to have to tie your [bleep] to a bag of doorknobs and kick you down the [bleep] stairs? This year you've also made over 3,000 jokes about the president's beautiful son, Eric. Do you have any idea of what that kid's been through? Do you know how hard it is to go through life looking like Beavis [bleep] Butthead?”The skit’s whole premise was flawed from the start, as Kimmel earlier referred to his 2025 suspension as “that unexpected FCC vacation week.” In reality it was ABC that suspended him because they were worried he was going to make the situation worse after Kimmel had gotten himself in trouble over his remarks about the political identity of Charlie Kirk’s assassin.Here is a transcript for the September 30 show:ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live9/30/202611:45 PM ETROBERT DE NIRO/BRENDAN CARR: Let's see. It says we have 192 instances of you poking fun at the president's appearance. Did you say the president looks like a Macy's parade balloon filled with cottage cheese?JIMMY KIMMEL: I may have said that.DE NIRO: Did you say the scarf the president was wearing brought out the color in his neck vagina?KIMMEL: I don't recall.DE NIRO: You don't recall?KIMMEL: No.DE NIRO: Do you recall referring to the commander-in-chief as Mar-a-Lardo, Benito Gasolini, Captain Cankle-roo?KIMMEL: Cankle-roo, yeah. What is the point of this? I don’t—DE NIRO: Did I tell you it was your turn to talk, numb nuts? You speak when I tell you to speak and otherwise you shut the [bleep] up.KIMMEL: Hold on a second. You cannot use language like that on television. There are rules, you know.DE NIRO: There are rules?KIMMEL: Yeah.DE NIRO: I run the FCC. Who's going to stop me? Who? Him? Don't get involved. Now, let's see. What else do we have here?KIMMEL: Probably nothing. I don't know.DE NIRO: Well, let's see. Did you say that President Trump has touched more women than the music of Adele?KIMMEL: Come on. Now, you—you have to admit that's pretty funny, right?TRUMP: You're doing it again. Am I going to have to tie your [bleep] to a bag of doorknobs and kick you down the [bleep] stairs? This year you've also made over 3,000 jokes about the president's beautiful son, Eric.KIMMEL: Oh.DE NIRO: Do you have any idea of what that kid's been through?KIMMEL: No.DE NIRO: Do you know how hard it is to go through life looking like Beavis [bleep] Butthead?KIMMEL: You know what? Fine. You know what? I'll go easier on Eric, okay?DE NIRO: Was that so hard? Be nice. Capiche? October 1st, 2026 9:47 AM Alex Christy 297053 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/steve-malzberg/2026/10/01/cnn-expert-claims-motive-flydubai-incident-could-be-benign On Wednesday, tragedy was averted after the co-pilot of a Flydubai flight from Saudi Arabia to Tel Aviv, reportedly carrying more than 100 Israelis, stabbed the captain in the cockpit, causing the jet to plunge thousands of feet, before a passenger and crew member subdued the attacker allowing another crew member to take control of the plane. Despite strong appearances to the contrary, CNN found a guest who wouldn't rule out "workplace violence" as the cause of the incident.On the 1pm edition of CNN's News Central, co-host Boris Sanchez did start the show by calling the incident, "A suspected mid-flight hijacking attempt." He then threw it to Jeremy Diamond at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, who played some chilling video of what took place on the plane. DIAMOND: On the ground, you can see both pilots bloodied. One of them appears to have been restrained.Both of them are on the ground, clearly in need of medical attention. And what you hear from the men in that video, some of the Israeli passengers, is talking about one of the pilots having attacked the other one and the fact that they then rushed into the cockpit and were able to get that plane back up and to avoid it from crashing into the ground.After playing still more video of the chaos on board, Diamond made sure to point out that it was too early to draw any conclusions about why this apparent terrorist did what he did.DIAMOND: What's also still unknown, not only to the passengers on board, but to Israeli authorities, is what exactly were the motivations, the motives of this pilot who stabbed the captain of the plane and apparently tried to crash it into the ground.We know that Israeli officials suspect potential terrorist motivations, but none of that has been confirmed as of yet.Next, co-host Brianna Keilar innocently revealed even more evidence that this was a nefarious plot as she introduced CNN Transportation Analyst Mary Schiavo. KEILAR: Mary, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, passengers believe the co-pilot tried to sabotage the aircraft systems and crash the plane after stabbing his colleague. What evidence would investors find of that in this case then?Schiavo cited the passengers who entered the cockpit, radar sources and flight data recorders, before concluding with, "So, so much evidence already, but this is a hugely important international investigation for security going forward, huge."Sanchez then turned to Georgetown University's Donell Harvin, former D.C. Chief of Homeland Security, who actually downplayed the likelihood that this was a hijacking, downplayed the entire issue of motive, before making a shocking statement. SANCHEZ: Donell, what's your reaction to hearing that, at least according to Israeli officials, this was an attempted hijacking?HARVIN: Yes, well, the there's another narrative out there that the airline saying it's still being investigated. Boris, there's a spectrum of issues. I don't think that the motive right now is important. It could be something as benign as workplace violence all the way up to a terrorist issue.Workplace violence!? And stabbing a pilot is "benign"?Harvin would then claim the big issue is how the pilot got on board with a knife, to which Schiavo responded, "So while I -- I immediately thought a knife, how did he get a knife through security, well, flight crew have the special lanes and they don't get as much security, but there's also weapons within the cockpit, like the flight axe and other things."Meanwhile, at the same time, over on Fox News's America Reports, co-host John Roberts went further in his open then Sanchez did, calling it, "An attempted hijacking, what's being described as a jihadist terror attack." Where did he get "described as a jihadist attack" from? As Fox's Foreign Correspondent Jeff Paul would soon report from Tel Aviv, "Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is calling the incident an attempted jihadist terror attack." That was never mentioned by CNN's Diamond in his report from Tel Aviv.Roberts then brought on former Counterterrorism Coordinator in the first Trump administration, Jeff Paul, who far from raising "workplace violence" said, "The thought that kept going through my mind, this is what happened on 9/11. This is like the Flight 93 scenario but an alternative universe where the passengers come a heroic passengers are able to gain access to the cockpit, take over the flight and prevent the terrorists from maintaining control."You can watch part the Fox segment in the video below. The difference in content and analysis between the two networks was significant, with Fox unafraid to go where CNN mostly avoided. They have an aversion to jumping to a radical-Islam narrative. This is CNN!  October 1st, 2026 9:32 AM Steve Malzberg 297050 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/dawn-slusher/2026/09/30/chuck-lorre-wishes-death-trump-insults-melania-and-mocks-rfk Screenshot from Snapstream As network shows begin returning to television for the fall season, CBS’s liberal, TDS-laden “Sitcom King” Chuck Lorre, who we’ve covered extensively, has once again taken shots at President Trump, but this time, he also targeted First Lady Melania Trump and even sunk so low as to mock Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s rare neurological disorder that affects his speech. To his credit, however, he also spoke out against “far left, woke culture.”As covered by The Hollywood Reporter (THR), Lorre’s remarks were delivered during what should have been a unifying event. He was accepting a founder’s award at Project Angel Food, a charity that delivers meals to those who are unable to shop for groceries or cook for themselves. The Los Angeles headquarters has now been renamed the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation Campus because of the producer’s large financial contributions to the charity.Not surprisingly, Lorre’s first target was President Trump, who he called a “bloated, orange piece of sh*t.” He then expressed his wish for the president to die, stating, “But because I’m a comedy writer, I have no choice but to explain how I wake up every morning to turn on CNN to see if the President of the United States had a heart attack while straining to take a dump.” Yeah, double ick.His next jab was at the First Lady:“I’d love to encourage you to pull out your wallets and contribute to this amazing organization, but my need to cause laughter forces me to question how a country can embrace a smart, educated, warm, funny first lady like Michelle Obama and somehow be OK with a surgically enhanced, cold-hearted Yugoslavian escort who clearly hates her husband.”Still not funny. But we did enjoy the first half of his next joke:I’d like to beg the [Democratic National Committee] to run from the suicidal insanity of the far-left woke culture in the coming election, [and] urge them to seek the common sense middle ground that emanates from the hard-working, blue-collar heart and soul of America. You bet I would. But once again, it’s not funny. So, I’ll just point out those hard workers will likely die of measles because Bobby Kennedy told them not to get vaccinated.”Something tells us that someone who thinks it’s funny to wish death on our president isn’t really interested in seeking “the common sense middle ground.” According to THR, things took an even uglier, darker turn as Lorre then admitted to “preparing” to mock Kennedy’s voice which is negatively affected by his neurological disorder, spasmodic dysphonia:When Lorre delivered that last punchline, he dropped his tone and made his voice sound as gravelly as possible to poke fun at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. “I actually practiced that,” Lorre quipped.He closed his speech with a play on The Serenity Prayer asking, "God, grant me the serenity to no longer give a sh*t about all the stupid people in this country. The courage to say Donald Trump is a Russian asset who traded teenagers with Jeffery Epstein. And the wisdom to end on a cheap laugh."Call us crazy, but we really don’t think mocking a human being for a neurological disorder they can’t control and using it for comedy fodder is something someone should be proud of. (Didn’t liberals lose their minds when they thought Trump was mocking a reporter’s disability years ago?)THR apparently recognized the unseemliness of Lorre’s speech too, as they hosted a poll on their site asking, “Do you think Chuck Lorre’s speech at a recent fundraiser went too far or was perfectly appropriate?” At the time of this writing, the results were 40% for “Went too far,” 40% for “Was perfectly appropriate,” 20% for “Somewhere in between,” and 0% for “Other/No opinion.”It would be nice if the first result was closer to 100%, but considering how liberal THR is, it’s surprising it was even a tie. Let’s hope Lorre goes back to doing sitcoms and keeps his inappropriate political digs, mocking of disabilities and daily death wishes for the president to himself.If you enjoy torturing yourself with awful "humor," here are a few clips of Lorre's horrible "jokes":At a recent charity event, @CBS's "Sitcom King" @ChuckLorre1 joked about wishing death on @POTUS every morning he wakes up, called @FLOTUS a "Yugoslavian escort" who hates her husband, and proudly mocked @RobertKennedyJr's neurological speech disorder. pic.twitter.com/ck4V6AGTt5— Dawn Slusher (@BlondeBlogger) September 30, 2026 September 30th, 2026 10:37 PM Dawn Slusher 297033 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2026/09/30/its-different-abc-selectively-reports-senate-candidate-gaffes Color us shocked: it appears that the Disney-owned American Broadcasting Company, with its status as a purveyor of bona fide news programming currently in dispute, is selective about which perceived candidate misstatements or gaffes make it to air. Take one guess as to what that selection criteria is.ABC World News Tonight ended its A-block by hyping Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s quote questioning the effectiveness of the GOP midterm convention. Watch below: WATCH: @ABCWorldNews is selective about which Senate candidate faux pas to cover. Pouncing on "Republicans in Disarray" and "POLLS DOOM!1!" angle for Ken Paxton's critique of the midterm convention, absolute zero on Troy Jackson's awful Holocaust quote, to wit: "It’s unfortunate… pic.twitter.com/tMqn3mje1z— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 1, 2026 ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT9/30/266:45 PMDAVID MUIR: Now to the midterm elections tonight, just weeks away, now. This evening, the Texas Senate race and what the Republican in that race is caught on audio saying about President Trump and the president's recent convention in Texas. Here's Mary Bruce tonight.MARY BRUCE: Tonight, in audio obtained by the New York Times, Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate in the closely watched Texas Senate race, can be heard complaining President Trump's recent midterm convention in Dallas hurt Republican campaigns, including his own.KEN PAXTON: When we did that convention- it dropped our numbers. Everybody's numbers dropped. Right now, yeah. Not good.BRUCE: In a remarkable leadup to the midterms, polls in the reliably red state now give Paxton's Democratic opponent, James Talarico, a slight edge. Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has weathered personal scandals and corruption allegations. Talarico, a former middle school teacher and student minister, making inroads into even some of the reddest parts of the state. During the Republican midterm convention, Talarico held a food drive nearby.JAMES TALARICO: They are toasting to their own corruption.BRUCE: Late today, the president asked about Paxton's comments, blaming Trump's convention for his campaign woes.DONALD TRUMP: Well, I haven't heard that, but I can tell you that the convention was amazing.BRUCE: But polls put his approval rating at or near record lows, in some cases as bad as in the aftermath of January 6th. And tonight, Texas’s outgoing Republican Senator, John Cornyn, with a warning.JOHN CORNYN: The president wants to make all these elections about himself when his favorability ratings are not what they once were. That's not a plus. That's a negative.MUIR: And, Mary, we should point out that despite that audio capture, President Trump is scheduled to be in Texas tomorrow to campaign with Ken Paxton. I know you're going to track that. In the meantime, while we have you tonight, the other major headline. This involves changes at the Pentagon and a shift for the U.S. in Iraq?BRUCE: And David, in the middle of this war with Iran, Secretary Pete Hegseth today announcing he is slashing the number of generals and admirals at the Pentagon by 20%. It comes on the same day that U.S. forces have now formally withdrawn from Iraq after more than two decades.MUIR: Mary Bruce at The White House tonight. Mary, thank you.For ABC, this is a no-brainer. They get to do “Republicans in Disarray” AND run another “Polling DOOM” story in which no actual polls are cited. For their “Republicans in Disarray” angle they got a quote from outgoing Texas Senator John Cornyn. Were the shoe on the other party’s foot, you’d never hear a quote from a primary-losing Democrat. In fact, when’s the last time any of these networks got a quote from Jasmine Crockett on James Talarico? ABC managed to sneak THIS story in at the end of their A-block but there was another story they could’ve done, with a more damaging quote from the Senate candidate. THAT candidate, though, is a Democrat. And not just a Democrat, but the Democrat that was selected to replace Nazi-adjacent Graham “Herr Totenkopf” Platner in Maine.Per NBC News Center Maine:Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson is apologizing for comments he made this week in a NEWS CENTER Maine candidate profile interview about Israeli “genocide” in Gaza.In reiterating his view that that the three-year-old Israel-Gaza war “is a genocide,” Jackson said in the interview, “There are people here in Maine that don't like to use that term only because, you know, they're Jewish and, you know, what that means to them with the Holocaust.”Imagine the media reaction had a Republican said such a thing about the Holocaust. The dudgeon would be through the roof, if for no other reason than to deflect from the left’s very real antisemitism problem. You’d have at least a weeklong cycle atop A-block on both network news and cable.ABC displays a blatant double standard here by running the Paxton story while omitting Jackson. As we often say: if it weren’t for double standards there would be none at all. September 30th, 2026 9:34 PM Jorge Bonilla 297051 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/justine-brooke-murray/2026/09/30/planned-parenthood-thinks-theyre-saving-lives-ending It takes a lot of chutzpah for Planned Parenthood to state “everyone deserves a full life,” when their entire mission is to end the shortest of lives before they’re even out of the womb. But that’s exactly what they un-ironically wrote in a recent Instagram post, as if we’re all going to believe the sincerity of a business that put down over 430,000 babies within the span of a year.Planned Parenthood says everyone deserves a full, healthy life.No, we aren't joking. pic.twitter.com/mT6ctjrybI— MRC Video (@mrcvideo) September 28, 2026 Taking their statement seriously would be as ridiculous as entrusting Canada’s government-angels of death to talk the suicidal off of a ledge. But there is nothing the left loves better than re-writing words to mean their opposite. Planned Parenthood’s underlying message is that allowing a human baby to live instead of murdering it always poses a threat to the mother’s life.In some cases, they will at least try to tie a woman’s actual death to state laws preventing abortion, even when the true cause always turns out completely unrelated. For the most part, however, their definition of “life threatening” means the baby might pose an inconvenience to the mother’s life (aka career and free time), because she must… god forbid… take adult responsibility for another person. Actually ending a life and the reproduction of another person is therefore called, “reproductive healthcare.” It’s the same mindset the left has used to equate speech that threatens their worldview to violence. Likewise, "structural violence” is a term they coined to describe anything from the lack of cultural “representation” to “inequity” that results from the lack of free government handouts. With that logic, their army of vigilantes are justified in hunting down and executing healthcare CEOs the way Planned Parenthood believes they’re justified executing pre-born children.  September 30th, 2026 5:46 PM Justine Brooke Murray 297049 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2026/09/30/we-are-doomed-abc-cbs-melt-down-over-no-govt-regulations-whs-ai Screenshot via ABC/Snapstream With their flagship morning shows on Wednesday, ABC and CBS continued the liberal, elitist media-wide campaign to take as certified, unavoidable truth the claims from certain corners of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector that AI will not only take over the planet, but “poses a threat to humanity” that’ll leave billions of people dead.That mindset was evident as ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings melted down over Tuesday’s White House AI summit, which concluded without an announcement of sweeping, iron-fisted government regulations to assume control of the industry.ABC was, as usual, the most hyperbolic. Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos screeched that Trump “downplay[ed] the risks of AI, saying at a lunch with tech executives that the companies can police themselves despite warnings that AI poses a threat to humanity.” ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ was particularly unhinged when it came to melting down over Trump’s AI summit.George Stephanopoulos screeched the President “downplay[ed] the risks of AI, saying...companies can police themselves despite warnings that AI poses a threat to humanity.”… pic.twitter.com/qDR01fshQg— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 Senior political correspondent and virulent Trump hater Rachel Scott relayed that the President “insists that there’s no need for the federal government to step in and rein in this technology, instead leaving it up to the companies to regulate themselves,” even though “the very tech leaders” he saw “have sounded the alarm about AI.” Scott doubled down on the apocalyptic scenarios: “With the most powerful tech executives standing behind him, President Trump declaring AI leaders should police themselves after weeks of dire warnings about the threat it could pose to humanity.”She scoffed at the signed joint agreement, whining “[t]here will be no federal guardrails on AI,” and that Tuesday’s lunch instead resulted in “a voluntary joint agreement.”Moments later, she contrasted Trump with the side she herself finds reasonable versus Trump, who has “dismissed those concerns, rejecting calls to regulate AI as a globalist scheme”: She contrasted Trump with the side she herself finds reasonable, playing up clips of Dario Amodei arguing his company could be dangerous and Bill Gates predicting AI could murder billions of people pic.twitter.com/mrWRdQFDrR— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 She concluded by showing herself founding Trump and pointing to a Quinnipiac University poll backing up her argument the government needs to, in essence, assume control of the industry (click “expand”): She concluded by showing herself founding Trump and pointing to a Quinnipiac University poll backing up her argument the government needs to, in essence, assume control of the industry pic.twitter.com/f7JWnpp75W— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 SCOTT: [TO TRUMP] The leaders standing behind you have had some very serious concerns about AI. Even after meeting with them today, you’re still calling this a hoax, so why should the American people take your word over this?TRUMP: It’s not a hoax. It’s a very serious. That’s why I changed the name.SCOTT: Okay.TRUMP: A hoax sounds like, you know, when you’re using the former name, but this name is now superintelligent. That’s not a hoax.SCOTT: I tried asking Amodei what he wants the President to do. [TO AMODEI] You’ve had some serious warnings about AI. [BACK TO VOICE-OVER] But he walked away and did not answer. So again, this agreement is voluntary. It’s legally non-binding. It also comes as a new poll from Quinnipiac University shows that 79 percent of voters would rather have safety when it comes to AI instead of advancements in this technology.Over at CBS Mornings, they showed that, yet again, it’s not the MAGA TV that the media reporting class has insisted.Co-host Nate Burleson panned the summit: “A White House meeting on the potential dangers of AI left many people wondering just how much was achieved. The tech CEOs who met with President Trump did agree on a request to police themselves, but critics say much stronger guardrails are needed.”Senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe said the “extraordinary” and “unprecedented gathering” featured “titans of the world’s fastest-growing and potentially most dangerous industry” who signed onto “a new set of voluntary safety standards.”“But Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who raised the loudest concerns about the dangers of AI and wants more government intervention, expressed caution...The President and Speaker dismissed more government regulation of the AI industry, but Democrats are pushing for more action to ensure safety,” he later added.Unlike ABC, CBS and O’Keefe brought up Trump’s comments about building data centers:The President also said he discussed the construction of data centers with the AI leaders, saying he still wants them built in the U.S., but away from homes. He suggested building them could provide more economic incentives in communities where they’re being built, such as dividends to residents or bonuses for local schoolteachers.Over on NBC’s Today, co-host Craig Melvin said “the growing debate and concern surrounding AI” led to “that historic White House summit between President Trump and some of the nation’s leading tech titans.”Senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez emphasized right off the bat that “there are growing questions about how binding [the] agreement really is” between Trump and “some of those powerful business leaders in the world, leading companies worth trillions of dollars.”“This morning, after an extraordinary meeting at the White House, the U.S.’s biggest tech giants are now attempting to go present a united front, despite sharp disagreements over whether AI needs more guardrails...President Trump rejecting calls for more government regulation, instead releasing a signed document,” he said.Gutierrez was the lone network correspondent to mention on Wednesday morning Trump’s moves to “rebrand AI as SI, superintelligence” as well as the release of “the new AI-powered America.gov, which the White House describes is a one-stop shop for federal services like renewing passports.”Further, Gutierrez presented balance when talking about the split inside Big Tech about the positives and negatives of AI (click “expand”):GUTIERREZ: The President emerging from the lunch with Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg —ZUCKERBERG: What we can all agree on is that the American public and our customers want to know that what we’re building is working in a way in a we intend.GUTIERREZ: — and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, who has been warning about potential dangers.DARIO AMODEI: I think the technology has really real risks, and the mechanism, how we address those risks is still under discussion.GUTIERREZ: Among those risks, OpenAI scrapping the release of its new model over security concerns and previously rogue AI agents hacking into government websites. Still, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang argues new regulations are not needed.HUANG: There is no conflict between innovation, technology and safety.GUTIERREZ: But other tech leaders are pushing for the government to do more.BILL GATES [on The New York Times’s The Ezra Klein Show]: This is the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near. In other areas, do we just say, hey, release your drugs, there’s no FDA. There’s no airline safety board. There’s no requirements that cars use seat belts.GUTIERREZ: The President also downplaying concerns about AI data centers, saying he’d rather they be built in the U.S. instead of China.TRUMP: The data centers are incredible — and, by the way, I’m very good at real estate. Some of those buildings are absolutely beautiful.To see the relevant transcripts from September 30, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC). September 30th, 2026 5:21 PM Curtis Houck 297048 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-spinnato/2026/09/30/cnn-highlights-california-business-closing-due-state-policies CNN/SnapStream Ahead of a CNN-hosted California gubernatorial debate on Wednesday night, the network highlighted the struggles of a Hollywood-area small business that has had to close in part due to some of Democratic-led California economic policies. CNN investigation report Kyung Lah even closed her report by saying California economic issues were “going to chase Governor Newsom as he seeks higher office.”Paired with a preview of the debate stage, host Dana Bash introduced the story and noted the restaurant owner highlighted, Tom Sopit, and his business “survived the pandemic, but six years later, it could not survive the current economy.”At the start of the report, Sopit remarked, “It's just becoming increasingly tough to operate in this state and in this city. So we decided to close.” 🧵Ahead of tonight’s CNN’s California Governor’s debate, CNN highlighted the economic challenges in California and the “shrinking of Hollywood” and seemed to place some blame on policies in the Democrat-led state.Investigative reporter Kyung Lah highlighted the closure of a… pic.twitter.com/lon5RceyuC— Nick (@nspin310) September 30, 2026 Lah then detailed Sopit’s actions with his business during the pandemic, including how he and his “small staff prepped free meals for any worker who lost their job.” She asked Sopit, “How do you survive that, but you have to close now?”He responded, “Through the years, the economics of the state and the country has really changed. We have tried. It's not like one thing that took us out. It's just, what I like to say, death by 1,000 cuts.”He then noted a higher cost of labor due to California labor laws, among other issues, like raised insurance premiums:Affordability has really impacted our state. Cost of goods. The cost of labor is much higher than everyone else in the country. California labor laws are really tough. The insurance is a big part of it, with wildfires controlling the premiums and the increases, all the carriers leaving the state, and that's why it went up so quickly.After Sopit was asked about the “shrinking of Hollywood” and its impact on the business, he also said, “It's a completely different city now.”To illustrate the issues for business, he said in West Hollywood, “There's a lot of for-lease signs up, a lot of businesses that are shutting down, many just a few months after they open. It's really sad.” Later, Lah detailed more of the issues in California, including “fees for business” and “the regulations that restrict you from being able to build stuff.” She added, “All of it is just crushing.”Lah then continued and said California’s affordability issues might impact… pic.twitter.com/dl3yxR6Dwc— Nick (@nspin310) September 30, 2026 Lah then asked what his advice was to the next governor of California. He pleaded for them to “focus on real challenges” before he noted how high taxes have not helped the state:I think you can't just keep taxing businesses and people. How are we just keep paying more taxes, but somehow the state just keeps going downhill? That doesn't make sense. There has to be some real change there.Lah closed her story with Baash, and detailed more of the issues in California, including “fees for business” and “the regulations that restrict you from being able to build stuff.” She added, “All of it is just crushing.” She closed and said the affordability issues might impact a future run for office for Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom:These Democrats today are looking at generations where they can't have what their parents have. Sopit’s parents, who were immigrants to this country, had a business in Los Angeles, a restaurant, and their son could not do the same thing. And that is going to chase these candidates. And, frankly, it's going to chase Governor Newsom as he seeks higher office.The tough talk on California policies and Newsom was much different than the softball, fly-fishing interview with Newsom conducted by CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month.The transcript is below. Click "expand":CNN’s Inside PoliticsSeptember 30, 202612:44:35 PM EasternDANA BASH: The stage is set right here in Los Angeles for the California governor's debate, which I'll be moderating alongside Jake Tapper. Among the independent voters listening tonight to Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will be restaurant owner Tom Sopit. His business survived the pandemic, but six years later, it could not survive the current economy. CNN's Kyung Lah has the story.[Cuts to video]KYUNG LAH: Tonight is last call. That “Employees Only” restaurant and bar. The final pour for owner Tom Sopit closing after nearly ten years in West Hollywood.TOM SOPIT: It's just becoming increasingly tough to operate in this state and in this city. So we decided to close.LAH: A bittersweet end to service after surviving the pandemic.SOPIT [From March 2020]: I'm concerned.LAH: This was Sopit in March 2020. COVID-19 gripped the country. Sopit's restaurant shut down with all the others. His rent was $1,000 a day. He was completely underwater.SOPIT [From March 2020]: All we can do is help each other.LAH: Help is what he did. Sopit's small staff prepped free meals for any worker who lost their job. For weeks, he donated food to emergency rooms across Los Angeles. He turned his parking lot into an outdoor patio, pivoting with ever-changing protocols.[To Sopit] How do you survive that, but you have to close now?SOPIT: Through the years, the economics of the state and the country has really changed. We have tried. It's not like one thing that took us out. It's just, what I like to say, death by 1,000 cuts.Affordability has really impacted our state. Cost of goods, the cost of labor is much higher than everyone else in the country. California labor laws are really tough. The insurance is a big part of it, with wildfires controlling the premiums and the increases, all the carriers leaving the state, and that's why it went up so quickly.LAH: How much did the shrinking of Hollywood impact you?SOPIT: Oh, immensely. It disappeared overnight. We're not really Hollywood anymore. All these people that are -- that used to work here, used to work in the city of Los Angeles are now gone. All the businesses close early because there is no foot traction. It's a completely different city now.LAH: Tell me about what you see when you drive around West Hollywood. SOPIT: There's a lot of for-lease signs up, a lot of businesses that are shutting down, many just a few months after they open. It's really sad.LAH: Sopit voted for Gavin Newsom, but is today a registered independent. He says the political system is failing people like him.[To Sopit] Your advice to the next governor of California?SOPIT: Yes. My advice is, focus on the issues. Focus on the real challenges. Drive up and down the street. Get your hands dirty. I think you can't just keep taxing businesses and people. How are we just keep paying more taxes, but somehow the state just keeps going downhill? That doesn't make sense. There has to be some real change there. [Cuts back to live]BASH: And Kyung joins us now. I mean, just so heartbreaking. And as you and I were talking about during the break, sadly not uncommon. So, we have Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra both chasing voters like him in tonight's debate. What do you think just, obviously, being a California voter, but more importantly, talking to so many, what is the issue that you think could have the most impact on Sopit’s vote?LAH: I mean, very, very simply, it's one word. It's affordability. And here in California we're not just talking about the price of milk or the price of gas, although it is the most expensive in the entire country. We're talking about structural things like being able to pay for your insurance, get daycare so you can get a job and keep that job. Then the fees for businesses, the regulations that restrict you from being able to build stuff. All of it is just crushing. And we're not talking about Sopit trying to be rich. He was trying to break even for a solid year and could not do it, so he has to pull the eject button. And one last thing, Dana, and something that these candidates really need to keep an eye on is that these Democrats today are looking at generations where they can't have what their parents have. Sopit’s parents, who were immigrants to this country, had a business in Los Angeles, a restaurant, and their son could not do the same thing. And that is going to chase these candidates. And frankly, it's going to chase Governor Newsom as he seeks higher office.(...) September 30th, 2026 4:45 PM Nicholas Spinnato 297046 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/09/30/daniel-dale-scolds-mainstream-media-have-regularly-failed-trashing Screenshot from Snapstream/CNN Anyone who's paying attention to CNN knows that their Toronto-based "fact checker" Daniel Dale is almost entirely focused on the dishonesty of Donald Trump. Unless it's "Vance Repeats Trump's Fiction," on occasion. Trump certainly keeps the "fact checkers" busy. But it's amazing how they seemingly consider fact-checking Democrats to be "normalizing" Trump, like you can't ever suggest "both sides do it."Dale posted a big-picture analysis on Sunday under the headline "I started fact-checking Trump 10 years ago. Here are 15 things I’ve learned." This one is by far the funniest, that Dale's liberal colleagues are all worthless and weak: The mainstream media doesn’t handle Trump’s lying well enoughPro-Trump media entities have shown embarrassingly little interest in addressing his lies. But more neutral outlets have regularly failed, too. On the last full day of Trump’s first presidency in 2021, I wrote, “Too often, coverage of flagrantly dishonest Trump speeches still mentioned the dishonesty in passing or not at all. Too often, coverage still quoted the president’s lies without explaining that they were wrong.” More than five years later, these problems persist.There are various reasons for that, including reflexive adherence to old habits, a Trump-driven deluge of breaking news and the diminished number of employed reporters. (CNN is one of very few outlets that has a full-time political fact-checker.) So Dale is reminding us that this isn't his first scolding of the "MSM." Feel free to giggle that the liberal media outlets are described as "more neutral." There are fewer "fact checkers," since the Washington Post closed Glenn Kessler's Trump-obsessed shop. CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter used Dale for the headline for his Monday "Reliable Sources" email:The media ‘doesn’t handle Trump’s lying well enough’As usual, the lefties insist that a "mainstream" story on a Trump speech should sound something like this: "President Trump unleashed another torrent of lies again today at his speech on the economy..." Every story needs that Acosta-stan flourish. Stelter summarized: "He knows some people shrug off Trump’s lies by saying 'they all lie,' but 'we are witnessing a rare, very possibly once-in-a-lifetime political liar.'”It's completely fair to call out the president if he says something like "food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down," as he claimed at the midterm convention. But Dale's spin here underlines that these "all-time liar" claims are going to be discounted if you devote any substantial time to fact-checking Trump's opponents. PS: One rare non-Trump fact check in August came rushing to defend Abdul el-Sayed: How Tim Scott and a Republican attack ad misleadingly snipped key context from El-Sayed’s ‘dangerous’ speech  September 30th, 2026 4:00 PM Tim Graham 297044 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/09/30/view-trump-targeting-press-putin-skip-jack-smith-probing ABC via SnapStream ABC’s hypocrisy was on full display between Tuesday and Wednesday’s episodes of The View, when it came to concerns about government overreach involving the media. First, when speaking with journalist Evan Gershkovich about surviving his time in Russian captivity, The View suggested President Trump was turning America into a mirror of what he just escaped. Then, when it was revealed in a congressional hearing that Special Counsel Jack Smith had scooped up journalists’ emails in his Trump investigation, they claimed it was a “waste of time.”When nearing the end of their interview with Gershkovich, where he detailed how he was arrested by Russian authorities and used as a bargaining chip with the United States for prisoner swaps, co-host Joy Behar tried to bait him into agreeing with her that America was becoming like Russia under Trump.“Seems to be the situation that these dictatorships, the first place they go is the press. We're experiencing some of that in this country right now,” she proclaimed while banging her hand on the table. Legacy co-host Lisa Ling, filling in for Whoopi Goldberg, agreed with a firm, “Certainly.”Gershkovich appeared reluctant to go where Behar tried to lead him. Once it became obvious her wasn’t giving her what she wanted, Behar interjected and promptly went to a commercial:GERSHKOVICH: Yeah, I mean there's a part - You know, the Part 4 of the book is this sort of when I get home and I start reporting again. I want to figure out why they took me, you know, answer some of these questions, but also how the swap worked, how the negotiations went. And it was the - Trump’s second inauguration had already taken place and I was, you know, DOGE had basically --BEHAR: Well, Trump just invited Putin to go down to Miami, so they're palsy-walsy.His new memoir, This Cured Beautiful land: A Russian-American Story is available now. You can scan the QR code on your scene to purchase a copy. We'll be right back. Joy Behar tries to bait Evan Gershkovich, a journalist arrested and held hostage in Russia, into agreeing that Trump is turning America into Russia and going to arrest journalists.He doesn't take the bait, and the interview ends. pic.twitter.com/gHsmtqeQaC— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 29, 2026 Fast-forward 24 hours, The View was discussing the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Smith. The same hearing where Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed that Smith had sifted through the e-mails of conservative and liberal journalists, including the Media Research Center.The intrusion into the private conversations of journalists by a federal government investigator went completely unmentioned by The View cast, who were more interested in mocking Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) for his failed slam-dunk on Smith.“These things are such a waste of time,” shouted pretend independent Sara Haines. “They are such a waste of time! We literally are talking about a war that is dividing this country. People can't afford dinner or gas. And we have midterms coming up and this is what they're going to choose to focus on.”“Isn't that the point? Isn't that the point?” Behar agreed.Perhaps they didn't care because ABC wasn't on the list shared by Grassley. Sen. Grassley says Jack Smith obtained communications from 18 media outlets, the Media Research Center among them. Everyone on that list should want answers. We do. pic.twitter.com/sVto9VBL2b— Media Research Center (@theMRC) September 29, 2026 Helping the regular cast beclown themselves, legacy co-host Debbie Matenopoulos, who was also filling in for Goldberg, suggested the only important information to come from the hearing was that Smith was a fan of women’s basketball. Of course, faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed:MATENOPOULOS: It’s wag the dog, ‘look over here, look over here, don't look at this, look over here.’ I mean, I think the only thing that's come of this is we now know that Jack Smith is a huge Caitlin Clark fan.FARAH GRIFFIN: Right? That was literally the only thing. Ignoring the revelation that Jack Smith obtained the email communications of many journalists and news outlets as he targeted Republican law makers, The View claims the only thing we learned form the Judiciary Committee hearing was that he's "a huge Caitlin Clark fan." pic.twitter.com/7reTNEu9LA— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 30, 2026 “I don't know what went on there but I find Jack Smith very hot,” Behar, the queen hypocrite agreed.The transcripts are below. Click "expand" to read:ABC’s The ViewSeptember 29, 202611:52:21 a.m. Eastern(…)JOY BEHAR: Seems to be the situation that these dictatorships, the first place they go is the press. [Bangs her hand on the table] We're experiencing some of that in this country right now.LISA LING: Certainly.EVAN GERSHKOVICH: Yeah, I mean there's a part - You know, the Part 4 of the book is this sort of when I get home and I start reporting again. I want to figure out why they took me, you know, answer some of these questions, but also how the swap worked, how the negotiations went. And it was the - Trump’s second inauguration had already taken place and I was, you know, DOGE had basically --BEHAR: Well, Trump just invited Putin to go down to Miami, so they're palsy-walsy.His new memoir, This Cured Beautiful land: A Russian-American Story is available now. You can scan the QR code on your scene to purchase a copy. We'll be right back.September 30, 202611:06:10 a.m. Eastern(…)SARA HAINES: These things are such a waste of time! They are such a waste of time! We literally are talking about a war that is dividing this country. People can't afford dinner or gas. And we have midterms coming up and this is what they're going to choose to focus on.BEHAR: Isn't that the point? Isn't that the point?(…)11:08:19 a.m. EasternDEBBIE MATENOPOULOS: It’s wag the dog, ‘look over here, look over here, don't look at this, look over here.’ I mean, I think the only thing that's come of this is we now know that Jack Smith is a huge Caitlin Clark fan.ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Right? That was literally the only thing.SUNNY HOSTIN: That’s basically it.(…)11:08:59 a.m. EasternBEHAR: I don't know what went on there but I find Jack Smith very hot.[Laughter]We'll be right back. September 30th, 2026 3:25 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 297045 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2026/09/30/tentacles-george-soros-mrc-primer As Americans gear up for another tumultuous midterm election year, voters should be aware that the most notorious billionaire in politics is still actively trying to bend society into his own personal plaything from an entire menu of political and sociocultural angles. MRC George Soros, who has emerged as one of the top political donors (again) for the midterms, has dedicated his massive fortune over the years to exploiting the vehicles of media, climate change, terrorism, education, elections, censorship and lawfare to be agents of his dark "open society" worldview. To that end, Soros has poured well over $32 billion to ensure his Open Society Foundations (OSF) remain a well-oiled machine to ensure that the “arc of history” is foreseeably bent to his will now with his more radical son Alex taking the throne of the empire. The elder Soros once boasted that “[i]t is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” according to The Independent in 1993. This is not just the musings of a billionaire overdosing on his own ego. He has developed an international reputation for putting his money where his mouth is. In fact, Morton Abramowitz, a former head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, once referred to Soros as “the only man in the United States who has his own foreign policy and can implement it.” This acknowledgement alone puts Soros on a political tier that drastically separates him from his peers who may or may not have larger fortunes than he does. It was The Washington Post in 2017 that dubbed OSF “one of the most powerful philanthropies in the United States.” German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle went as far as to call OSF in 2026 “among the world's most influential NGOs.” And what he left in the wake was vast political chaos. This did not happen in a vacuum. From infamously breaking the Bank of England and making his “greatest” financial gains by “destabilizing currencies on the global market,” as Stanford University summarized, Soros made his mint off of the very type of chaos he now foments through his multibillion-dollar empire. Day-by-day and little-by-little, America and the world is slowly inching towards Soros’s dystopian vision, whether willingly or unwillingly. As Americans head to the polls this November, MRC Business is providing a brief primer on the tentacles of one of the darkest political forces still in operation today and the devastating consequences it will continue to wreak if left unchecked and allowed to proceed functioning in the shadows. 1. CONTROLLING THE MEDIA: Spent $400 Million to Control the Country’s Radio AirwavesMRC has repeatedly exposed the fortunes Soros has spent to gain influence within the global media.Nothing made this effort to control the public’s media diet more apparent than his chilling acquisition of radio giant Audacy — America’s second largest radio company — during the 2024 election season. Soros Fund Management purchased $400 million of Audacy’s debt, giving him a massive 40 percent stake in the company. That gave Soros control over the 16 powerful 50,000-watt radio stations that Audacy either features or streams, meaning that their coverage is especially widespread. What made the deal even more nefarious was that Biden's Federal Communications Commission dubiously fast-tracked Soros’s purchase of the radio giant that September against the typically rigorous application process, since the purchase was also backed by foreign money.In 2025, MRC exposed how one of the stations within the Soros Radio Network, KCBS 740 AM, had unmasked the unmarked vehicles ICE agents were using during an operation in East San Jose, California, by giving exact descriptions and last known locations documented by the leftist pro-illegal immigration group Rapid Response Network. The anchor who spearheaded the coverage, Bret Burkhart, was later demoted, with the scandal ultimately culminating in his resignation following an FCC investigation. 2. REMAKING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: Spent $117 Million to Direct and Control at Least 126 Radical ProsecutorsMRC discovered through a year-long investigation that between local election spending and financing of extremist soft-on-crime nonprofits, Soros has spent a whopping $117 million towards installing, directing and controlling his radical district and state attorneys. When MRC released its groundbreaking report in 2024, Law & Dis-Order: How The Soros Machine Directs and Controls Prosecutors Across America to Implement His Leftist Agenda, MRC researchers calculated that Soros’s fixation on remaking the American criminal justice system gave his network undue influence over the policies of at least 126 local and state prosecutors across the country. He even expressed his commitment to continue transforming the American criminal justice system when he wrote a July 2022 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal boasting that he would continue his “support” for “reform-minded prosecutors” despite growing criticism. “I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform,” Soros wrote. “I have no intention of stopping.”The Washington Post summarized Soros’s monetary involvement in a high profile 2022 district attorney’s race in Maine, that it was “among dozens around the country that Soros has bent to advance his criminal justice agenda, showing how a single billionaire can change the course of public policy.” In 2016, Politico reported that Soros was engaged in a “quiet overhaul of the U.S. justice system.” As the current state of lawfare in the U.S. has clearly shown, Soros has largely succeeded.  3. GLOBALIZING THE GREEN NEW DEAL: Spent $618 Million to Usher In an Eco-UtopiaBetween the $193 million fortune funneled into at least 345 eco-extremist groups and hundreds of millions pledged in commitments between 2016 and 2024, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) under both the elder Soros and his son Alex’s leadership respectively have allocated at least a whopping $618,895,617 collectively toward exploiting the issue of climate change to overhaul global political structures into one, massive eco-utopia.Arguably none of the green organizations Soros has pumped with cash exemplifies the Soros agenda more than the radical group C40 Cities, which identifies itself as a “global network of mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis.” In its 2023 “Outcomes” report, C40 Cities — working directly alongside Soros’s Open Society Foundations — boasted how its Inclusive Climate Action (ICA) programme, which “sup-ports cities to ensure local climate policies and initiatives are designed in an inclusive way and have equitable impacts, launched the Global Green New Deal (GGND) pilot initiative to support cities in delivering the GGND principles.” C40 Cities bragged how it partnered with OSF to “to target peer-to-peer engagement in 30+ champion cities across five regions. Nine of these cities were selected to serve as fivepilot projects, whereby C40 provides technical support in the form of designated city advisors.” The Soros strategy, co-opted by C40 Cities, was to institute the radical tenets of the Green New Deal from the bottom-up after the program failed to pass at the federal level in the U.S. Congress. 4. BUYING ELECTIONS: Spent $176 Million to Purchase the 2022 MidtermsBuying electoral outcomes is part of Soros’s modus operandi. During the 2022 midterm elections, Soros eclipsed all others in the donor class by claiming the crown as top political spender with $176,752,713 doled to outside groups to boost leftist candidates to stave off the projected “red wave.” The effort proved to be successful as Democrats drastically overperformed in their respective elections. Soros has since been back to his old tricks by spending another $103.3 million at least so far to help Democrats take back control of Congress in the 2026 midterms, and until recently was again crowned top midterm donor and is still the top Democrat donor overall.  5. SPONSOR OF TERROR? Spent $80 Million on Pro-Terrorism GroupsFollowing the harrowing events of the October 7, 2023, genocide against Israel by terrorist organization Hamas, MRC was the first to uncover how Soros was funding organizations that openly celebrated the wanton murder, rape and pillaging the terrorists inflicted on Israeli civilians.Around the same time, MRC was also the first to resurface a disturbing 2007 op-ed buried in the Soros website archives, where the billionaire demanded for the United States and Israel to “open the door” to Hamas in negotiations. This led other groups like the Capital Research Center to later reveal that Soros had fueled pro-terror organizations and others tied to extremist violence in the U.S. and abroad to the tune of $80 million at least, which later triggered a Department of Justice investigation.  6. BACKING THE CORRUPT: Spent $204 Million on Groups Pressuring Corporate Charities to Resume Donations to Disgraced Southern Poverty Law CenterBeing “corrupt” is not a stain on your utility if you’re still useful to the "open society" agenda, such is the case with the Soros-funded Southern Poverty Law Center, which has become notorious for placing targets on conservatives and Christians’ backs for years. The SPLC was recently indicted by a grand jury on multiple, damning charges of fraud, including charges for financing the very white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups it was claiming for years to be crusading against. After multiple corporate charities cut off the donation spigot to the SPLC, the Soros Network went to work. MRC discovered a letter sent by a number of leftist organizations to leadership at Fidelity Charitable, Vanguard Charitable and Charles Schwab Affiliate DAFgiving360 to bully them into turning the SPLC donations back on. At least 10 of the signatories to the letter received a whopping $204,505,779 from the Soros empire collectively between 2016 and 2024 alone.At least three of the leftist Soros-backed powerhouse groups named in the letter — the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund and the Windward Fund — were all previously part of the notorious dark money political giant Arabella Advisors, which dissolved in November 2025 after drawing a wave of legal scrutiny from the GOP-led Congress.  7. USHERING IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF NEW YORK: Spent $37 Million on Groups Backing Communist Zohran MamdaniSoros may not be a communist in the direct sense, but he has no problem using avowed communist politicians in order to further his overarching, chaotic vendetta. Part of that vendetta clearly involved overhauling New York City from the empire of capitalism to the 21st century experiment of American Communism. Soros spent at least $37 million on a litany of left-wing groups that were backing then-communist candidate Zohran Mamdani for the NYC mayorship. At least ten Soros-backed groups led get-out-the-vote efforts that helped Mamdani upset former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the NYC Democratic primary, including the socialist extremist Working Families Party (WFP). The New York Post reported July 12, 2025, that WFP “helped score Mamdani the Democratic line by brokering cross-endorsement deals that squeezed out Cuomo,” the Post reported. The entire Soros-backed cohort is backing Mamdani’s “Marxist agenda that includes advocating for criminal migrants and condemning Israel.” The end result? As former Southern District for New York federal prosecutor Jim Zirin pointed out August 26, 2026, Mamdani has made the city into an “unaffordable” nightmare. 8. SILENCING THE RIGHT: Spent $80 Million on Groups Pushing Big Tech Censorship Ahead of 2024 Presidential ElectionBuying elections isn’t enough for the Soros empire. Silencing conservatives is also part of the brand.In 2024, MRC uncovered an effort by radical Soros-backed media group Free Press — which claimed responsibility for helping get former President Donald Trump banned from Twitter in 2021 — to turn the screws on Big Tech to up the ante on their censorship operations ahead of the 2024 presidential election. In an open letter, anti-free speech groups raged at social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X) and YouTube for reducing “interventions necessary to keep online platforms” allegedly “safe and healthy” and demanded “swift action” to protect so-called democracy. MRC research unveiled that at least 45 of the signatories have had their coffers packed with Soros cash to the tune of at least a whopping $80,757,329. The letter was distributed to top executives at Big Tech platforms at Discord, Google, Instagram, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Rumble, Snap, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).  9. A WORLDWIDE REPROGRAMMING: Committed more than $2.3 billion to Create a Global University Network to Brainwash the Next GenerationThe Soros agenda wouldn’t be complete without brainwashing the next generation. In 2022, MRC revealed that Soros had committed a combined sum of more than $2.3 billion to a global education juggernaut, split between his newfound creation –— the Open Society University Network (OSUN) — and the two Soros-backed educational institutions co-leading it: Central European University (which Soros founded himself ) and Bard College. Aside from the enormous funding doled out to CEU and Bard, Soros seeded OSUN with $1 billion, which has since been rebranded as the Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century (GHEA21). At the time, OSUN (now GHEA21), had already swallowed up 41 institutions into its space to promote the Soros worldview, which included U.S. based organizations like Arizona State University, University of California, Berkeley Human Rights Center, and Columbia University’s Picker Center for Executive Education.During a 2020 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Soros boasted that he considered OSUN “to be the most important and enduring project of my life.” Ironically, Bard College professor emeritus of history Gennady Shkliarevsky rebuked his institution for joining with Soros’ political agenda for education. In 2020, he called Soros’s Open Society University Network the “making of an unholy alliance.” He further noted that “The motivation for creating the OSUN is political. The OSUN will use education as a tool for ideological and political purposes—to advance and promote the vision and ideology of open society. Combining education with ideological and political goals can amount to indoctrination.”  September 30th, 2026 2:35 PM Joseph Vazquez 297042 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2026/09/30/cbs-nbc-finally-cover-smith-hearingbut-bury-substance-under-viral After their flagship evening newscasts ignored late Tuesday the explosive Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former Special Counsel Jack Smith, CBS and NBC emerged Wednesday with full segments on CBS Mornings and Today, but they joined ABC’s Good Morning America in burying the entire point of the hearing under the hoopla surrounding a viral moment involving one Republican senator’s explosive claim about Smith.However, all three still refused to mention the most explosive revelation in the entire hearing about Smith having obtained communications from 18 different news organizations.CBS Mornings covered the heated hearing in its second hour, but featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers couched it through the lens of what Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said:On Capitol Hill, Jack Smith, who tried to prosecute President Trump, faced Senate Republicans who say he unfairly targeted GOP. One senator went as far as to suggest that Smith was lying, but he was the one who was wrong. Ed O’Keefe has more from the White House. Ed, that was a jaw-dropping moment.Following a brief diversion about Duthiers being named a nominee by People for sexist news anchor, O’Keefe quipped, “Let’s just say, Vlad, that Senator Eric Schmitt thought he was going to dunk on a witness, but instead, he missed and completely messed his shot.” CBS Mornings covered the heated hearing in its second hour, but featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers and correspondent Ed O'Keefe both alluded to it through the lens of what Schmitt asked Smith.Only at the very end did O’Keefe himself mention what the hearing was actually about:… pic.twitter.com/7VAxSH9RgM— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 “Schmitt accused Smith of attending an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024. He alleged it was to collude with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was investigating the President's alleged meddling in Georgia’s 2020 elections. The only problem? Later testimony revealed Smith was hundreds of miles away at an Iowa Hawkeyes women's college basketball game,” O’Keefe added ahead of the clip.O’Keefe concluded by remarking that “Democrats slammed Schmitt, saying he should have been more careful before making those accusations” even though “Schmitt still stands by the overall message.”Only at the very end did O’Keefe himself mention what the hearing was actually about: “Smith also defended his decision to charge the President, saying Trump had engaged in criminal activity. Gayle, a bit of a flub by the senator. Let’s put it that way. Doesn’t know ball.”“Oh, Huge flub. I wonder who’s going to take the fall for that because somebody gave him all that information. It was very interesting to watch, and Amy Klobuchar certainly came through in that moment,” gushed co-host and former Democrat donor Gayle King.NBC’s Today had it in the tease. Co-host Savannah Guthrie admitted it was a “fiery hearing” about Smith “defend[ing] his investigations of President Trump, and Republican lawmakers pil[ing] on,” but tacked on the Schmitt as an “attempt at a gotcha moment” that “appeared to fall flat when more facts came out.”Guthrie and longtime correspondent Kelly O’Donnell also led with the whole reason Smith surfaced before moving to their partisan celebrations. NBC’s Today at least led with the whole reason Smith surfaced before moving to their partisan celebrations. pic.twitter.com/HyckZXjfc9— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 “Now to that contention hearing on Capitol Hill. Republican lawmakers grilling the former special counsel who charged President Trump in connection with separate federal criminal investigations,” Guthrie declared.O’Donnell picked it up from there (click “expand”):O’DONNELL: President Trump has long criticized and called for action against former Special Counsel Jack Smith. Senate Republicans argued that Smith’s investigation of President Trump that led to felony charges was politically motivated, allegations Smith denied. That divide turned personal. Weeks before the coming midterms, Senate Republicans turned up the heat, unloading their anger on a frequent target of President Trump’s fury: former Special Counsel Jack Smith.SCHMITT: You will go down as a total dirtbag.SENATOR JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): You make me want to throw up in my mouth.O’DONNELL: The President and some Republicans say the former prosecutor should be prosecuted himself, arguing Smith abused his power and sought to hurt Mr. Trump politically. Smith standing his ground.SMITH: And I will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution from the President or others.O’DONNELL: Smith also defended his investigation that led to two felony indictments against Trump back in 2023, related to retaining classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election.SMITH: Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes.O’DONNELL: Republicans tried to demonstrate Smith’s investigation was political.The next minute concerned the Schmitt incident, with O’Donnell saying the “exchange...went viral” as the Missouri senator “attempt[ed] show that Smith was in Atlanta on a certain date, apparently trying to link him to a Democratic prosecutor there who had charged Mr. Trump.”All told, O’Donnell spent just over a minute (63 seconds) parading before viewers the embarrassing moment: The next minute concerned the Schmitt incident, with O’Donnell saying the “exchange....went viral” as the Missouri senator “attempt[ed] show that Smith was in Atlanta on a certain date, apparently trying to link him to a Democratic prosecutor there who had charged Mr. Trump.” pic.twitter.com/9abuD5CijP— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 O’Donnell returned to the non-theatrics in her last two sentences, but ran cover for Smith: O’Donnell returned to the non-theatrics in her last two sentences, but ran cover for Smith: “Republicans also argued that it was improper that Smith’s investigation subpoenaed phone log records for a number of Republican lawmakers. Smith said those records were obtained to… pic.twitter.com/3YcnJGrcKx— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 Republicans also argued that it was improper that Smith’s investigation subpoenaed phone log records for a number of Republican lawmakers. Smith said those records were obtained to corroborate what witnesses had told them about phone calls made between lawmakers and President Trump on January 6, and he had not called Democrats.Not to be left out, the most virulent Trump-hating broadcast network was more blunt.ABC’s Good Morning America had co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos hype in a tease the “failed perjury trap” has “everyone...talking.” Not to be left out, the most virulent Trump-hating broadcast network (ABC) was more blunt.Co-host Robin Roberts cued up chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas: “Now to the fiery hearing on Capitol Hill. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith spent hours before the Senate… pic.twitter.com/Ob8n61eKU6— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 30, 2026 Later, co-host Robin Roberts cued up chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas: “Now to the fiery hearing on Capitol Hill. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith spent hours before the Senate committee...Pierre, there’s one moment so many people are talking about.”Thomas complained that “Tuesday’s hearing was a political fistfight with name-calling and a curious debate about a basketball game” as Smith endured “an often volatile hearing, defending the two cases he brought against President Trump, accusing him of trying to overturn the 2020 election and for bringing classified documents to his Florida home after leaving office.”The rest of his report (nearly 90 seconds) was about Schmitt’s error (click “expand”):THOMAS: But the hearing quickly devolved when one Republican attempted to prove Smith lied under oath about a basketball game. Republican Senator Eric Smith calling Smith a dirtbag and claiming to have text messages proving Smith attended a Hawks basketball game in Atlanta in 2024 during the time Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis was investigating Trump.SCHMITT [TO SMITH]: Did you ever go to Atlanta during your time as special counsel?SMITH: I really don’t think so. It’s possible I flew through the Atlanta airport on the way to Florida, but I do not have a recollection of going to Atlanta. I definitely did not go to a Hawks game.THOMAS: On that day. February 3, 2024, Smith said he was at a Maryland college basketball game.SMITH: I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing — right around that time.THOMAS: Senator Amy Klobuchar calling out Smith.SENATOR AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Could it then be that University of Iowa’s Hawkeyes? Could that be it?THOMAS: And calling on him to apologize.KLOBUCHAR: I think that people should have their facts straight —SCHMITT: Didn’t know we had bonus time around here.KLOBUCHAR: — before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag and not get the teams wrong. SCHMITT: I stand by that statement.SENATOR CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Klobuchar —KLOBUCHAR: You have the teams wrong, sir.GRASSLEY: — Senator!THOMAS: Senator Schmitt refusing to say he was wrong, but Special Counsel Smith saying that the U.S. Marshals were with him at the college basketball game and that he can prove it[.]Because ABC seems to encourage its co-hosts to editorialize, co-host Michael Strahan scoffed, drawing verbal nods of agreement from Roberts and Stephanopoulos: “Alright, Pierre. Little embarrassing there.”To see the relevant September 30 transcripts, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC). September 30th, 2026 2:31 PM Curtis Houck 297043 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2026/09/30/nprs-anti-israel-agenda-flies-netanyahu-un-intifada-loving-painter NPR let its anti-Israel agenda fly in two very different stories Friday, one from the United Nations General Assembly, the other a tribute upon the death of a radical Palestinian painter. An NPR.org story bylined by Kat Lonsdorf and Kate Bartlett, based on a Friday Morning Edition segment carried a hostile headline: “Netanyahu rages against critics, including Mamdani, at the U.N. General Assembly.”And why would Israel’s prime minister do that? Don’t ask NPR. No context was given regarding the United Nation’s historically hostile and relentless focus on Israel (remember "Zionism Is Racism"?), and its particular loathing of Benjamin Netanyahu, prejudices so all-encompassing that some consider the U.N. operationally anti-Semitic. Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has justified the October 7 massacre, compared Netanyahu to Hitler, and whined about America’s “Jewish lobby.”Protesters rallied outside the United Nations building in New York and many delegates inside walked out of the room as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a fiery address to the General Assembly, denying allegations of genocide and slamming his critics, including the city's mayor, Zohran Mamdani.Mamdani is more than a “critic,” given his call for the arrest of Prime Minister Netanyahu as a war criminal during his mayoral campaign.NPR left off Netanyahu’s salient point of stopping the war to administer polio vaccinations to Gazan children, a detail that all by itself puts a crimp in the “genocide” lie.The Israeli leader called Mamdani, New York's first Muslim mayor, "antisemitic.""Mr. Mamdani, you tried to stop me from coming here. You tried to silence me. Well, you can't silence me, and you can't silence the truth," Netanyahu said in his speech.In a statement responding to Netanyahu's criticism, Mamdani dismissed the Israeli leader's speech as "baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide against Palestinians."The reporters blocked pro-Israeli arguments at every turn:The Israeli leader's comments came after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered his address via a recorded video. The Trump administration had denied a visa to Abbas, on the grounds that the Palestinian leadership is undermining the prospects for peace, even though Abbas has been consistent in his call for a settlement with Israel. It's the second year in a row the U.S. has denied Abbas a visa for the assembly.In his address, Abbas condemned Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and again called for a two-state solution. "We seek a democratic Palestinian state that respects the rule of law and human rights, a non-militarized state that lives in security and peace alongside the state of Israel," he said.Short memory alert: Handed the golden opportunity for a state, former PLO leader Yassir Arafat instead went on a terror spree against Israel. But NPR still seeks to push the propaganda that Palestinian leadership seeks peaceful coexistence.NPR also allowed Abbas to play the “genocide” libel against Israel, a nasty attempt to weaponize the Holocaust against Jews.Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has been a major topic of the week, as several world leaders have used their speeches to bluntly criticize Israel's conduct. A U.S.-mediated truce between Israel and Hamas has been in place since last October, but Israel has continued its attacks. More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire agreement, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health authorities.Perhaps because Hamas won’t disarm as required under the ceasefire agreement?Increasingly isolated, Netanyahu's combative address comes as he faces an election next month that will decide if he remains prime minister.From New York City to East Jerusalem: Saturday’s All Things Considered ran a story by Lauren Frayer, the last reporter to visit radical Palestinian painter Sliman Mansour before his death.Born the year before Israel's creation, Sliman Mansour spent his life painting the faces and landscapes of Israeli occupation….He portrayed characters with agency — what Palestinians call sumud, Arabic for steadfastness or perseverance — through an era when their real-life rights have been eroded, and worse.Frayer’s interview included this loaded question: “In your paintings, women have agency, people have power. I wonder if that's intentional, at a time when Palestinian people have been stripped of their rights.”As always, attention was granted solely to Palestinian suffering in Gaza, without mentioning such the suffering was caused by the leaders they elected and who maintain support there, given their joy after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. September 30th, 2026 2:02 PM Clay Waters 297006 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/09/30/politifact-gives-mike-rogers-mostly-false-citing-el-sayeds-record When a radical who is running for office suddenly experiences a campaign conversion in order to portray himself as more of a moderate, how can voters really trust him? If PolitiFact’s Caleb McCullough is to be believed, it is because he says so. The “he” in question is Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, whose Republican opponent Mike Rogers recently accused him of supporting efforts to defund the police and empty prisons. On Monday, McCullough slapped a “mostly false” label on Rogers for simply recalling El-Sayed’s pre-candidate record.Reacting to a Rogers ad with a corresponding X post, McCullough observed that “El-Sayed said he supported defunding the police in the past, and spoke about reducing incarceration rates and prison sentences broadly. Rogers’ X post is written in current tense as if El-Sayed “supports” these positions now, while the ad uses past tense to describe El-Sayed’s statements. During his Senate campaign, El-Sayed has not supported defunding the police and said he wants to increase funds for certain aspects of policing. He has not called for emptying prisons.”The idea that El-Sayed may be trying to hide his radicalness is not foreign to McCullough, as he wrote in the next paragraph, “Rogers’ campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said El-Sayed’s recent positions backtrack on his past statements. ‘Now, his insulting disapproval of law enforcement is coming back to haunt him, so he’s lying to Michiganders,’ she said.”If McCullough wants to believe that El-Sayed has changed, he can argue that in an opinion piece somewhere else. When candidates are arguing about whether a change in positions is genuine or not, fact-checkers should simply judge whether the accusations are plausible.On multiple occasions McCullough admitted that there was a historical record behind Rogers’s accusations including how El-Sayed had previously supported defund the police efforts, ‘“I believe that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,’ El-Sayed said in a Detroit Public Radio interview in June 2020.”He also observed how “CNN reported that El-Sayed in 2020 posted about a dozen times on social media about defunding the police. The posts have since been deleted.”As for prisons, McCullough again admitted how, “El-Sayed said he supported reducing prison populations because COVID-19 spread easily in crowded jails and prisons. He also backed policies to reduce jail and prison populations even after the pandemic.”The burden of proof on whether or not El-Sayed has changed is on him, and it requires more than flip-flopping during campaign season. There was nothing false about Rogers’s post or ad. It was just standard campaigning. September 30th, 2026 1:35 PM Alex Christy 297041 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/john-stossel/2026/09/30/flock-camera-debate-crime-fighting-tool-or-tool-mass-surveillance Screenshot via CBS/Snapstream Do you worry that you’re being watched?If you drive, you probably are.My new video covers the cameras that photograph the backs of millions of cars.A company called Flock has 80 percent of that market.Flock’s CEO says the goal is to “eliminate crime.”But lots of people hate the cameras.“We are asked to give up our privacy for really nothing in return,” says ACLU lawyer Chad Marlow.“These cameras save lives,” I push back, “catching criminals.”When a car thief kidnapped a child in Atlanta last month, Flock cameras helped police find the car and arrest a man within 15 minutes.Marlow says, “That car could and would’ve been found anyway without violating the privacy rights of every single person in America ... Surveillance doesn’t actually deter criminal activity, with one exception, car thefts in public parking lots.”“I hardly feel like my privacy’s invaded,” I tell him. “It’s just my license plate number. Anybody can see it.”Marlow replies that today, AI lets police use that photo to learn much more about us.“The data they collect when combined with AI is terrifying. Combine them with all other sources of electronic data from the government and our own personal lives, you are literally looking at what George Orwell warned us about.”Is Flock really that much of a threat?Some cops have been jailed for using Flock data to track women. One Denver police officer casually boasted, “You can’t get a breath of fresh air without us knowing.”But there are limits. When using Flock’s camera database, police must give a reason.Marlow laughs at that. “They have these security measures, but a 10-year-old could defeat them ... (One) law enforcement department, 111 times, listed the reason for their investigation as ‘investigation.’ Twenty times, it was ‘hehehe.’ And it went through!”Public anger about Flock cameras has politicians on Left and Right moving to limit them.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pulled them from state highways.“Stop Flock,” says a tweet from Sen. Bernie Sanders.This is a mistake, says Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute. “They are a useful law enforcement tool with really incredible potential to aid investigations.”I point out the misuse, but Mangual replies, “That is no more a reason to ban the technology than it would be a reason to disarm police in response to a handful of bad shootings.”I remind him that when DeSantis shut down Florida’s cameras, he warned about a “surveillance state.”“It’s not a surveillance state,” says Mangual. “These cameras see less than half a percent of the visible roadway. The idea that they can track you from place to place the way a GPS tracker attached to the bottom of your car is just wrong.”China is an actual surveillance state. Cameras track people’s movements, clothes, cars, even relationships.“It is only going to get worse as technology advances if we don’t stop it now,” says Marlow.Flock has no plans to stop. The company now promotes surveillance dronesSo far, I’m not very bothered by the privacy threat.I worry more about government’s endless wars, increased debt, inflation, growing handouts that make Americans dependent ...Flock surveillance is way down on my list.“That’s a mistake,” Michael Ricci, president of Stossel TV tells me. “Camera surveillance makes it easier for a tyrannical government to track where you go, and who you meet with. It also normalizes surveillance. As storage gets cheaper, maybe they will store videos instead of just photos. Maybe add facial recognition. Maybe they will connect the system to the ‘kill switch’ they’ve mandated in new cars. Government always finds ways to expand its powers.”He makes good points. China’s surveillance did not start with its current system. They started with a few cameras. This is not a path we want to start traveling.Giving governments more power is always dangerous.Government is force. Only government can legally take our property and freedom.Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.” September 30th, 2026 1:29 PM John Stossel 297040 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-spinnato/2026/09/30/morning-joe-connects-cruelty-ice-and-internment-camps-jordan MS NOW/SnapStream On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, the premier liberal morning program on MS NOW once again went after ICE, this time in defense of the described “DoorDash driver” shot by ICE in Texas who is now charged with assaulting an ICE officer. Host Joe Scarborough proclaimed “ICE lies” and gave no credence to ICE’s claims, and claimed they do not wear body cameras.Later, the show connected immigration enforcement under Trump, which was labeled as “cruelty,” to the Jordan Neely NYC Subway Case and Daniel Penny's acquittal, which was a big media story in 2024.After a report from MS NOW’s David Noriega, Scarborough began his ICE bashing:  Wednesday’s Morning Joe continued to defend the “DoorDash Driver” in Texas who is now criminally charged for allegedly trying to run over an ICE officer.After Joe Scarborough went on a rant about ICE and said “ICE lies,” he blamed Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins for… pic.twitter.com/aFoDJ1Nd3M— Nick (@nspin310) September 30, 2026 Mika, this happens time and time again. ICE lies. The government lies about these people who are victims of shootings.He then remembered the case of Renee Good in Minneapolis before he became an expert on police protocol: “Talk to any NYPD officer who will tell you you don't shoot at moving cars. You don't do that. They keep doing it.”Scabarough then connected the case to the midtemrs and attacks on moderate Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins, who is currently in a reelection battle: “Their body cameras aren't turned on. This happened in Maine. I love Susan Collins, as you were saying, to keep defending this type of behavior where they killed a young man, a father, a beloved husband, a hard worker. They killed a grandfather in Houston, Texas.”The entire Morning Joe crew joined in to hit Collins on her vote for the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and claimed the body cams she pushed for were not being used:SCARBOROUGH: Did Susan Collins vote for that?BRZEZINSKI: Yes she did. She voted for the money for ICE.GEIST: But she got body cams.SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, but no.Brezinski, continuing to connect the case to Collins, also said, “Well, actually, in this case, there was no body cam.” Scarborough followed, “No, they don’t wear the body cam,” to which Brezinski responded, “That money is not being used, I guess, for body cams”Notably, the image used in the Department of Justice filing against the “DoorDash driver” for allegedly assaulting ICE used an image from a body cam of some kind, according to FOX News’s Bill Melugin. Scarborough later called detention centers “internment camps,” before Mika Brzezinski connected the “broken norms” and “cruelty” of immigration enforcement to the Jordan Neely NYC Subway Case, a story that the show has revived for the past three days to promote a new book. https://t.co/iaZJlsPZjb pic.twitter.com/XX9BFdmVag— Nick (@nspin310) September 30, 2026 Later, Scarborough called ICE “un-American” before Brzezinski exclaimed, “And I don't know how we I don't know how all of our hearts aren't breaking every day as this happens,” and desired the construction of ICE detention centers.Scarborough then said, “More internment camps!”As the ICE discussion came to a close, Brzezinski turned to connect the case of the “broken norms” and “cruelty” of immigration enforcement under Trump to the Jordan Neely New York Subway case in day three in their discussion about Daniel Penny, the man acquitted in Neely’s death. The Neely segment followed two previous days that painted Penny as “dehumanizing” Neely due to language Penny used during interrogations.Add Neely to the bad historical comparisons Morning Joe constantly makes of ICE to things like the KKK, along with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.The transcript is below. Click "expand":MS NOW’s Morning JoeSeptember 30, 20267:52:48 AM EasternJOE SCARBOROUGH: Mika, this happens time and time again. ICE lies. The government lies about these people who are victims of shootings. Remember the wild lies told about Renee Good initially. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Oh god.SCARBOROUGH: She chased people into a snowbank or hit cops in snowbanks. Just a total lie. They lied about Alex Pretti in what looked to a lot of people like an execution style murder in the streets of Minneapolis. Their lying about - again. they're lying about another shooting in Texas. As you know, they shoot five times into a car. Talk to any NYPD officer who will tell you you don't shoot at moving cars. You don't do that. They keep doing it. Their body cameras aren't turned on. This happened in Maine. I love Susan Collins, as you were saying, to keep defending this type of behavior where they killed a young man, a father, a beloved husband, a hard worker. They killed a grandfather in Houston, Texas.They shot this man five times in the back, again, a worker, a DoorDash worker. I wonder what Ken Paxton is going to say on the campaign trail about this when he's finished blaming Donald Trump for his low approval numbers? I mean, it's just like, and now reports that they're going to go on a hiring spree in the coming months.WILLIE GEIST: 5000 new agents by December.SCARBOROUGH: Because there's not enough chaos on American streets already.BRZEZINSKI: They have a lot of money thanks to the big ugly bill that was.SCARBOROUGH: Did Susan Collins vote for that?BRZEZINSKI: Yes she did. She voted for the money for ice.GEIST: But she got body cams.SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, but no.BRZEZINSKI: She - No. Well, actually, in this case, there was no body cam.SCARBOROUGH: No, they don’t wear the body cam.BRZEZINSKI: I don't know. That money is not being used, I guess, for body camsSCARBOROUGH: The administration.BRZEZINSKI: I mean the -SCARBOROUGH: - obviously has no respect for Susan Collins because she telling her people, ‘Oh, I got body cams.’ They're not wearing body cams. So no, you really didn’t Susan.(...)8:00:01 AM EasternSCARBOROUGH: This is like nothing we've seen before. No, this is - again, it's un-American.BRZEZINSKI: And I don't know how we I don't know how all of our hearts aren't breaking every day as this happens. Whether it's people getting shot. Whether it's children who come home and their parents are gone. Whether it's people stuck in these detention centers in horrific conditions. And now they're building a Dilley Two.SCARBOROUGH: More internment camps!BRZEZINSKI: Detention centers.SCARBOROUGH: Internment camps.BRZEZINSKI: People who stay there for months and months, and thousands of people who then get sent to countries, they don't even have any connection to, just dumped there. I mean, the list goes on of abuses and laws broken, norms broken, and cruelty, which actually goes right into our next story perfectly –SCARBOROUGH: It really does.BRZEZINSKI: — because of the division that this is creating, the fear that this is creating the terror that this is creating, and also the hatred this is promulgating. So, we go back now to our ongoing discussion of the new book from MS NOW political analyst Anand Giridharadas. It's titled Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. It traces the story of the 2023 subway death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man with a history of mental illness, after another passenger, Daniel Penny, put him in a chokehold to subdue Neely when he was acting erratic in an apparent mental health crisis. Penny was charged in the death and was later acquitted. (...) September 30th, 2026 12:51 PM Nicholas Spinnato 297039 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/cnsnews/craig-bannister/2026/09/30/gdp-revised-both-1st-and-2nd-quarters-inflation-measures Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in both the first and second quarter was greater than previously reported, the U.S. Commerce Department announced Wednesday.Real GDP grew 2.2% in the second quarter, more than the 1.5% gain previously reported, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) report of the third estimate for the period released Wednesday. The second quarter GDP growth also exceeds the 1.5% increase economists had predicted.The contributors to the increase in real GDP in the second quarter were consumer spending, investment, and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, the sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment, increased 4.6% in the second quarter, revised up 0.4 percentage point from the previous estimate of 4.2%, which had been revised up from a prior estimate of 3.9%.The BEA report breaks down the changes to industry components that prompted the revision:“From an industry perspective, the increase in real GDP reflected increases in real value added of 2.5 percent for private services-producing industries, 2.3 percent for private goods-producing industries, and less than 0.1 percent for government. The leading industry contributors to the increase in real GDP were real estate and rental and leasing, information, durable goods manufacturing, and finance and insurance. The leading offsets were decreases in transportation and warehousing, retail trade, and nondurable goods manufacturing.”Inflation was lower in the second quarter than previously reported, according to revisions to three indices reported by the BEA:The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index increase was revised down, from 5.3% to 5.0%.The “core” PCE price index (excluding food and energy) increase was revised down from 3.6% to 3.3%.The GDP price index rise was revised down from 5.8 to 5.6%.Real GDP growth in the first quarter was revised higher, from 2.1% to 2.5%, in the new estimate released Wednesday. The change primarily reflects upward revisions to exports of services and consumer spending on both goods and services.The “real” percent changes reported by the BEA reflect seasonally-adjusted annual rates (SAAR). September 30th, 2026 12:43 PM Craig Bannister 297038 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/09/30/maddow-trump-authoritarian-guy-who-ensuring-ai-can-kill-us NBC’s Seth Meyers welcomed MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow to Tuesday’s edition of Late Night for the nightly anti-Trump gripe session. Maddow made sure to hit the usual notes, including calling Trump “an authoritarian guy,” but hit some new ones as well as she claimed that Trump is ensuring that the military will be able to kill us all with A.I.At one point in their discussion, Meyers said of Trump, “Rachel, I don't know if you agree with me. I think he might be unwell.”Amid laughter and applause from the audience, Maddow responded, “Well—I can't speak to that. But I can say one thing, which is he's a type. Right? He is—and I don't just mean, like, ‘New York real estate scam artist.’ I mean, like, he's a type. He's an authoritarian guy. He's Blond Berlusconi. You know what I mean?” Rachel Maddow tells Seth Meyers that Trump is "an authoritarian guy. He's Blond Berlusconi" and that he's gonna get us all killed "So, it's like been hard, I think, to imagine, 'How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?' 'How is it that A.I. Might kill us?' Well, the… pic.twitter.com/hFXpl3FMOj— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 30, 2026 Maddow elaborated that, “All these guys are the same thing. And in every authoritarian government, everywhere in the world, the one thing they've all got in common is that the rest of the government doesn't matter.”She also declared that “There’s all these things that are important about the government, and the military, and the way that we run, but—we run as a country that he doesn't care about, because it's not him controlling them. And so, he thinks it's irrelevant, and he's about to learn a very hard lesson in that regard once the Democrats take Congress back.”Meyers then switched to A.I., “Another thing, I don't wanna be—A.I., right? Like, we're living this moment where—certainly in the last, like, two weeks, scarier prognostications about what the future of A.I. will be. I don't necessarily think if we had Democrats in power, we'd be better set for this moment. But we do seem like we have a guy in charge who doesn't wanna think about it at all. Is this the wrong guy to solve A.I.?”Maddow replied, “I will say two things. First of all, The Washington Post just reported this week that Trump administration lawyers made sure to scuttle the international discussions that would have said that A.I. programs aren't allowed to kill people with military weapon systems without humans checking first on what they're trying to kill. So, Trump moved explicitly to make sure no human can interfere with robots' ability to kill us.”She also claimed that “So, it's, like, been hard, I think, to imagine, ‘How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?’ ‘How is it that A.I. might kill us?’ Well, the really easy thing to imagine is them using military weapons to kill us, and Trump is intervening to make sure they can.”That’s not an honest look at A.I. and the military. If someone programs A.I. to believe that 2+2=5, it does not make sense to blame the robot for believing that 2+2=5. If Maddow wants to claim that somebody in the military should do a better job of ensuring that the target list that the A.I. relies on and that was developed years before the war is still accurate, she can, but this idea that the computers have gained full sentience and are about to kill us all in service of the authoritarian Trump is nonsense.  Here is a transcript for the September 28-taped show:NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers9/30/20261:19 AM ETSETH MEYERS: Rachel, I don't know if you agree with me. I think he might be unwell.RACHEL MADDOW: Uh, well—MEYERS: I think he might be unwell.MADDOW: Well—I can't speak to that. But I can say one thing, which is he's a type. Right? He is—and I don't just mean, like, "New York real estate scam artist."MEYERS: Yeah.MADDOW: I mean, like, he's a type. He's an authoritarian guy. He's Blond Berlusconi. You know what I mean?MEYERS: Yeah.MADDOW: Like, he's—all these guys are the same thing. And in every authoritarian government, everywhere in the world, the one thing they've all got in common is that the rest of the government doesn't matter.MEYERS: Yeah.MADDOW: It's just them. It's only—the—your foreign policy is what the guy decided to burp out about foreign policy that day. Your economic policy, same thing. The whole government just exists to serve him, and everything else kind of falls away. And that's why there isn't, like, legislation being signed. Like, his party controls both houses of Congress. They haven't passed legislation in a very, very long time because he's not interested in that 'cause it's not about him.MEYERS: Right.MADDOW: And so, there's all these things that are important about the government, and the military, and the way that we run, but—we run as a country that he doesn't care about, because it's not him controlling them. And so, he thinks it's irrelevant, and he's about to learn a very hard lesson in that regard once the Democrats take Congress back.MEYERS: Another thing, I don't wanna be—A.I., right? Like, we're living this moment where—certainly in the last, like, two weeks, scarier prognostications about what the future of A.I. will be. I don't necessarily think if we had Democrats in power, we'd be better set for this moment. But we do seem like we have a guy in charge who doesn't wanna think about it at all.MADDOW: No. Yeah.MEYERS: Is this the wrong guy to solve A.I.?MADDOW: I will say two things. First of all, The Washington Post just reported this week that Trump administration lawyers made sure to scuttle the international discussions that would have said that A.I. programs aren't allowed to kill people with military weapon systems without humans checking first—MEYERS: Right.MADDOW: On what they're trying to kill. So, Trump moved explicitly to make sure no human can interfere with robots' ability to kill us.MEYERS: Right.MADDOW: So, it's, like, been hard, I think, to imagine, "How is it that the A.I. Apocalypse would happen?" "How is it that A.I. might kill us?" Well, the really easy thing to imagine is them using military weapons to kill us –MEYERS: Yeah.MADDOW: —And Trump is intervening to make sure they can. September 30th, 2026 10:00 AM Alex Christy 297037 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/emily-keegan/2026/09/30/maddow-suggests-trump-leaving-us-vulnerable-iran-attack-home MS Now via SnapStream On Monday night, MS NOW's The Rachel Maddow Show blamed the security breach of Britain’s military base on President Trump, despite Iranian efforts to thwart outside involvement in the war. In addition to alluding to the President’s ongoing conflict with Iran driving up prices, Maddow even suggested the administration was leaving Americans vulnerable to an Iranian terrorist attack here at home.Maddow delved into her speech with the recent security threat of the British military base in Gloucestershire, England. Described by the British government as, “a major threat,” the airfield, which housed American B-1 bombers, was unsuccessfully penetrated:The British government activated its COBRA protocols for major national security incidents, and as the news started to break here and worldwide about this situation in Great Britain, there was a lot of discussion about Iran's threats from earlier this year, their threats to any country providing help to the United States in Trump's war in Iran.Having pointed out the obvious hike in prices that come from war, Maddow began to fantasize about a potential Iranian danger entering U.S. territory, and whether or not Americans have, “really adequately grappled,” with the cost of such a war:Is it a cost that's not just going to be measured in lives lost and people injured and buildings destroyed, and facilities and aircraft and equipment destroyed, and the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz and all the other oil transit routes and infrastructure that have driven your gas and diesel prices and fertilizer prices to all time record highs. The multi-billion dollar cost just of anti-aircraft munitions alone, let alone all the other missiles and materiel we have expended in this war.Following her rant about the very reason Trump and his administration want to make an advantageous deal with Iran, Maddow left her audience with the eerie notion that the U.S. could be under a potential threat if a deal was not made soon. Maddow warned her audience that if a small town in the Cotswolds could play host to a possible danger, what is stopping something from happening in an American town:On top of all those costs, which we have barely grappled with, this still developing strange story at this rural air base in the Cotswolds in England, it also raises this very uncomfortable question for us Americans as to whether there's an additional cost of this war. Which might be an additional risk for us here at home of potential retaliatory violence against us by Iran or its proxies or its sympathizers.“And to get specific in terms of our ability to handle those potential kinds of threats here at home, of course, it would be the FBI that would be the agency on point there. Well, now we've learned that the Trump administration just removed from his job the top person in charge of that,” Maddow warned.  Maddow stoked fear that the administration had heartlessly left American out to dry by removing a couple FBI counterterrorism officials. “But both of those senior counterterrorism agents are now gone. They have been suddenly removed from their jobs right in the middle of this Iran war and right in the middle of all the Iran war still unfolding consequences,” she said.Despite the three assassination attempts on Trump and the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, Maddow scoffed at them being demoted for not taking threats to an administration official seriously enough:And the reason they have been taken off the job, the reason they're gone is reportedly because they were not sufficiently responsive to Stephen Miller's wife. What? Stephen Miller, you know, his wife, used to also work for the White House. She's now a right-wing podcaster. Stephen Miller's wife reportedly received phone calls that were upsetting to her. And I'm very sorry to hear that. That's terrible. But the FBI was asked to investigate those calls, specifically the counterterrorism part of the FBI was asked to investigate those phone calls. Really?MS Now might not care about the lives of administration officials, but the FBI should.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:MS NOW’s The Rachel Maddow ShowSeptember 28, 202609:00:44 p.m. Eastern(...)RACHEL MADDOW: We are watching developments tonight in a strange story out of Great Britain involving an airfield there, a military air base that the U.S. military has been using for its B-1 bombers in support of Trump's war in Iran.This weekend, Saturday night after midnight, a local resident who lives nearby that base, a farmer from one of the small towns near this military base in rural Gloucestershire, England. She called police in the middle of the night after she said she basically stumbled across a bunch of young men and a bunch of white vans that were all right near that military base for no apparent reason in the middle of the night.Police responded, and whatever they thought was going on there, they ended up evacuating dozens of nearby homes. They brought in a bomb disposal robot to get into the vans and go through them. This was described by the British government as “a major incident.” The British government activated its COBRA protocols for major national security incidents, and as the news started to break here and worldwide about this situation in Great Britain, there was a lot of discussion about Iran's threats from earlier this year, their threats to any country providing help to the United States in Trump's war in Iran.This summer, in late July, for example, Iran told the U.K. explicitly that if any British base was used by the U.S. military for this war against Iran, that would make that base in the U.K. a legitimate military target for Iran. Iran issued that threat in July. Because of that threat, because of that context, when we learned in today's news that five young men had been arrested and those vans were seized outside the gates of this rural air base, well, there was, for obvious reasons, lots and lots of speculation about who these five young men might be, and what this might have all been about. Lots of speculation, lots of worry, and then lots of head scratching. When it was announced this afternoon that all five of the people who had been arrested were let go. They were all released on bail. And we really do not know what this was about. All five men who were arrested and then let go are said to be British nationals. They're all from London. We don't know anything about what they were allegedly doing at this base or what their motivations might have been. We have been watching this story closely all day today and tonight, trying to learn more about what exactly happened here. For example, even after they let those guys go, it wasn't until late this afternoon our time that local residents were finally allowed to go back to their homes. It's really interesting story, really intriguing. We've been watching it closely, and we'll let you know as we learn more.But for us here in the United States, it raises an important question about the cost of Trump's war in Iran. Raises the question as to, you know, whether the cost of Trump's war in Iran is something that we've really adequately grappled with. Is it a cost that's not just going to be measured in lives lost and people injured and buildings destroyed, and facilities and aircraft and equipment destroyed, and the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz and all the other oil transit routes and infrastructure that have driven your gas and diesel prices and fertilizer prices to all time record highs. The multi-billion dollar cost just of anti-aircraft munitions alone, let alone all the other missiles and materiel we have expended in this war. On top of all those costs, which we have barely grappled with, this still developing strange story at this rural air base in the Cotswolds in England, it also raises this very uncomfortable question for us Americans as to whether there's an additional cost of this war. Which might be an additional risk for us here at home of potential retaliatory violence against us by Iran or its proxies or its sympathizers. And to get specific in terms of our ability to handle those potential kinds of threats here at home, of course, it would be the FBI that would be the agency on point there.Well, now we've learned that the Trump administration just removed from his job the top person in charge of that. The counterterrorism chief at the FBI's Washington field office, which is responsible for defending the U.S. from terrorist threats emanating from the Middle East. Specifically, the counterterrorism special agent in charge at the Washington field office, was apparently just removed from his post, along with his top deputy at that field office.Both of those senior counterterrorism officials, the senior counterterrorism people in the FBI for defending us here at home from terrorist threats emanating in the Middle East, these two people have decades of experience. They're both highly decorated for their FBI counterterrorism work. The deputy who was just removed was the person reportedly who supervised the FBI response to the Boston marathon bombing.But both of those senior counterterrorism agents are now gone. They have been suddenly removed from their jobs right in the middle of this Iran war and right in the middle of all the Iran war still unfolding consequences. And the reason they have been taken off the job, the reason they're gone is reportedly because they were not sufficiently responsive to Stephen Miller's wife.What?Stephen Miller, you know, his wife, used to also work for the White House. She's now a right-wing podcaster. Stephen Miller's wife reportedly received phone calls that were upsetting to her. And I'm very sorry to hear that. That's terrible. But the FBI was asked to investigate those calls, specifically the counterterrorism part of the FBI was asked to investigate those phone calls. Really?(…) September 30th, 2026 9:46 AM Emily Keegan 297031 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/09/30/leftist-tilt-mamdani-night-live Screenshot from Snapstream/NBC The People’s Republic of Late-Night Comedy will do its part to boost Democrats during the midterm election season. See the season debut of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Zohran Mamdani is not on the ballot, but these comedians are deeply in love with the radical leftist Muslim, so they feel compelled to transfer their giddy feelings to their Fake Trump.In the opening skit, the Mamdani character is told he has a visitor during harsh weather. He wonders “what reckless lunatic” would come to see me now? The Trump character enters, gushing: “Your best friend!”“I missed my Day One, Zohran Mamdani — because for some reason that no one can figure out, I really, really like you,” SNL’s Trump said. “Day One” is slang for they were pals since Day One.A few lines later, Fake Trump repeats: “I just love hanging out with you. We’re like one of those unlikely animal friendships, like when a tiger gets together with a baby goat. When I see stuff like that, I want to text it to you and say, this could be us!” We even get this fake gush: “You're in most of my dreams. I call you Mam-dreamy. Pick me, choose me, love me!” It had everything but kissing.Then, since Team NBC is pushing romantic tension, they send in Trump’s dissheveled, rain-soaked aide Natalie Harp, so Fake Trump can point out how Fake Harp’s dangerously obsessed with him. “She’s like the girl from [the horror movie] Obsession, but blonde.” The Harp character frantically insists she’s “totally normal,” then says to the mayor: “If you hurt him, I will end you!”It’s easy to imagine these comedy writers creating these skits to amuse themselves and their fellow Mamdani-loving New Yorkers. Do they wonder how this is received in rural red states? Do they care? Or do they just presume everyone wanting to be “cool” will eagerly accept their woke leftist spin?Then came the political “humor” in their fake-news “Weekend Update” segment. There were three jokes mocking Israel.SNL mocks America, not Iran: “Americans don't do terrorism. We do isolated acts of mental illness with a gun.”SNL mocks Israel: “Netanyahu addressed an almost empty chamber at the U.N. After delegates walked out in protest over Israel's war in gaza. I guess wherever Netanyahu… pic.twitter.com/uShzw7mBAi— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) September 30, 2026Fake anchor Michael Che went first: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed an almost empty chamber at the U.N. After delegates walked out in protest over Israel's war in Gaza. I guess wherever Netanyahu shows up, there’s gonna be some relocating.” Later, his partner Colin Jost added: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video attacking Zohran Mamdani, calling him the antisemitic mayor of New York. Worst subway take ever!” That's not a fact check. It's just fanboy talk.Che also made fun of a desperate white rapper. “Macklemore, who was dropped as the opening act for Ed Sheeran, announced he is launching a Free Palestine Tour.” This spurred raucous cheers and applause from the studio audience. Then he added: “But haven't the Palestinian people been through enough?”Back in March, Che uncorked the Zionist-conspiracy fakery: “Detractors on CNN are saying that Trump had no authorization for this war. But he actually did. Netanyahu said it was okay.”In April, Che repeated it: “There's growing confusion whether Israel being allowed to continue bombing Lebanon was part of the ceasefire with Iran. Ultimately that decision comes down to the man controlling our military: Benjamin Netanyahu.”Perhaps no one enjoys these anti-Bibi gibes more than Zohran Mamdani, who has made it clear that he considers Netanyahu a war criminal who should be arrested and sent for criminal trial in The Hague. Saturday Night Live isn’t merging politics and comedy. The laughs are never the point. They feel the urgent need to use their brand as a “comedy” platform to side with their "Day One" hero “Mam-dreamy.”  September 30th, 2026 6:16 AM Tim Graham 297034 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2026/09/30/omission-media-lose-interest-new-charges-against-doordash-driver Remember the illegal alien that the media were trying to rename “Doordash Driver” á la “Maryland Dad?” The Elitist Media were hot for his story when it furthered narratives of rogue ICE agents committing abuses against defenseless migrants. After new details became public in this case, the media dropped “Doordash Dad” like he was a bad delivery.The exception: PBS News Hour, which ran a brief report on the new developments as seen below: WATCH: The sole mention of federal charges filed against the Austin illegal alien "Doordash Driver" was on PBS News Hour- a brief missing significant elements of the story.AMNA NAWAZ: In the meantime in Texas, federal prosecutors are charging a Venezuelan delivery driver who… pic.twitter.com/7v5uvtAARd— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 30, 2026 AMNA NAWAZ: In the meantime in Texas, federal prosecutors are charging a Venezuelan delivery driver who was shot by an ICE officer earlier this month with assaulting a federal officer. The criminal complaint includes images which claim to show the side view mirror of a car driven by Wilber Rafael Garces Perez striking an officer's torso. He's been charged with one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer. Body cam footage from the incident shows the 28-year-old being treated after he was shot in the back. Garces Perez was facing a final removal order from the U.S. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.But wait, there’s more! Per the Department of Justice:The criminal complaint alleges that, during the stop, Garces-Perez provided the ICE ERO officers with his driver’s license. After verifying Garces-Perez was the person they were seeking, the officers asked Garces-Perez to place his vehicle in park and step out—orders which he allegedly ignored. The complaint alleges and body camera footage shows that after further direction from the officers in Spanish, Garces-Perez abruptly closed his window and drove off, striking one of the ICE ERO officers in the torso with the driver’s side-view mirror.The ICE ERO officers pursued Garces-Perez in their vehicles with their emergency lights and sirens activated. The complaint alleges Garces-Perez led them on a high-speed chase through a commercial and residential area. While one of the officers lost sight of Garces-Perez during the pursuit, the other ICE ERO officer caught up to Garces-Perez, who allegedly attempted to strike the officer with his car, causing the officer to fire his pistol.As bodycam use becomes more widespread with ICE, one imagines that these overwrought stories will dwindle significantly, if not end outright. The media did everything in their power to make this illegal alien into a sympathetic figure, but were thwarted by the bodycam.Once it became public that Garces Perez hit the ICE agent with the car as he attempted to flee a traffic stop, sympathy rapidly waned. The broadcast network newscasts had no choice but to run filler, such as ABC on the Oklahoma woman who tried to run her ex over, CBS on the car that crashed into a body shop, and NBC on a nonlethal school bus crash. “Doordash Driver” appears to have outlived his usefulness in service of The Narrative™. On to the next. September 30th, 2026 12:02 AM Jorge Bonilla 297036 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2026/09/29/network-evening-news-mostly-omits-explosive-jack-smith-hearing In an explosive hearing today, the Senate Judiciary Committee detailed explosive allegations of abuses of power by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team. In a blatant show of hypocrisy, the Elitist Media Evening News mostly refused to cover it.The sole report, a brief on ABC World News Tonight. Here it is, in its entirety: WATCH: The sole network newscast report on the explosive Jack Smith hearing, with its findings that Smith seized communications from multiple media orgs- a whole 32 seconds on @ABCWorldNews. Quite the contrast from White House Media Ban-a-Palooza.DAVID MUIR: To the other news… pic.twitter.com/FqKkcN1l1t— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 30, 2026 ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT9/29/266:41 PMDAVID MUIR: To the other news here this evening, former Special Counsel Jack Smith up on Capitol Hill today, testifying before the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee. Smith, who twice indicted President Trump, told senators he continues to stand by his decision to prosecute the President, saying Trump committed serious crimes.JACK SMITH: If asked whether to prosecute a former President today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.MUIR: Republicans on the committee accusing Smith of abusing his authority. The Media Hall Monitors incessantly tell us that Bari Weiss is turning the “MAGA-aligned” CBS News into Newsmax-on-57th Street. And yet all the Evening News could muster on the hearing was a 10-second ticker during the commercial break after A-block. WATCH: @CBSEveningNews buried the Jack Smith hearings, only running a 10-second commercial ticker after A-block pic.twitter.com/eiNFJqd9tv— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 30, 2026 NBC Nightly News did absolutely nothing on the hearing, despite being one of the media organizations listed by the Senate Judiciary Committee whose journalists “had their communications swept up by Smith…” which include, to wit: Fox News, CNN, CBS News including 60 Minutes, NBC News, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, The Federalist, the Washington Times, The Associated Press (I pause here to note that the AP's own writeup of the hearing omits the seized communications), Reuters, NPR, The Mark Levin Show, and the Media Research Center. ABC’s brief was essentially Trumpwashed, with its focus on Smith saying he’s do it all over again- and none of the focus on the allegations revealed in the hearing, whether the aforementioned seized communications of media organizations, or the captured financial data of nearly 5,000 small-dollar donors to the Trump campaign and related entities, Absolutely none of this made it into the network evening news tonight.What did the networks fill with? The former American Idol contestant’s guilty murder verdict took priority across ABC, CBS and NBC. The weather was at or near the top as well. There was plenty of time to fully cover the hearings, especially with their detailed revelations of violations of the media’s First amendment rights.It wasn’t that long ago that the Elitist Media were interested in such stories. When President Trump first announced on September 18th the revocation of White House privileges for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, the networks were all over it. Two minutes and 15 seconds on ABC World News Tonight, three minutes and 1 second on the CBS Evening News, and two minutes and 7 seconds on the NBC Nightly News. And that was just for the first evening of what turned into a weeklong news cycle. What is the difference between the two stories? We go back to ABC’s Trumpwashing. One story made Trump look bad, the other does not if fully told. That is the gross double standard on display here. September 29th, 2026 10:44 PM Jorge Bonilla 297035 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2026/09/29/ap-fumes-trump-chucking-ridiculous-biden-fuel-economy The climate change lobby-funded lackeys at The Associated Press are ludicrously attempting to cast President Donald Trump’s deregulatory efforts to boost the economy as a crime against the environment. YouTube AP reporters Alexa St. John and Anne D’Innocenzio’s new beef involves Trump’s relaxation of the disastrous Biden-era fuel economy standards that has hamstrung the auto industry for years. “Trump administration lowers fuel economy standards, critics say at a significant environmental cost,” read their agitprop-heavy September 28 headline. The reporters railed against Trump for relaxing oh-so-virtuous regulations supposedly engineered to “control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and light trucks.” But as then-Heritage Foundation Distinguished Fellow Steven Bradbury noted in 2024, the Biden administration was hellbent on “dictating” fuel standards that were “impos­sible for ICE vehicles to meet—some­thing Con­gress never auth­orized.” The end goal, as Bradbury pointed out, was to “snuff out Americans’ love affair with the inter­nal-com­bus­tion engine” and mainstream electric vehicle usage, something AP clearly champions:The change furthers Trump’s promise to revoke policies that encouraged or created incentives for the production of electric vehicles and ultimately, will expose Americans to more planet-warming pollution from vehicles.Here’s the fine-print St. John and D’Innocenzio chose to nix: EVs’ value depreciation rates are so ridiculously quick it's almost comical. Autoblog released a report the same day St. John and D’Innocenzio’s piece went live, and found that the steep price of battery replacement could drastically shorten the practical lifespan of electric vehicles.” In short, per Autoblog, “When an aging commuter car experiences a major high-voltage fault, the total cost of parts and labor can easily outpace the depreciated value of the vehicle itself.” The upshot is that this debilitating cost dynamic “directly challenges the fundamental sustainability goals of going green,” which is precisely what the Biden administration’s insane Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards sought to force down consumers’ collective throat. Did AP disclose any of that? Of course, not, as St. John and D’Innocenzio appeared more concerned with elevating how “[n]ews of the revised standards immediately drew rebukes from environmentalists,” as if car owners looking at the loaded stress on their checking accounts gave two hoots about what the greens think. The new finalized Trump standards would “correspond to a combined industry fleetwide average of roughly 34.9 miles per gallon for passenger cars and light trucks in the 2031 model year,” per St. John and D’Innocenzio. “That’s up from 30.1 miles per gallon for model year 2024, but down from a projected 50.4 miles per gallon in 2031 under rules put in place by the Biden administration.” Oh boo-hoo. On another note, when energy prices are undergoing waves of sticker shocks amidst the ongoing conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, one would think relaxing auto production streamlining to offset them would be a net economic benefit. As St. John and D’Innocenzio reported, “Automakers and industry groups have said the new rules will increase Americans’ access to the full range of gasoline vehicles they need and can afford.” But no, the AP duo chose to fixate on vacillating oil and gas prices — which are more a reflection of market jitters than fundamentals — as somehow necessitating stringent standards that force automakers to produce with both hands tied behind their backs:‘Trump is tanking sensible mile per gallon standards at the worst possible time for consumers, who are getting hit with sky-high prices at the pump,’ the Center for Biological Diversity’s Becker said. ‘Consumers will pay the price for these reckless rollbacks while Trump’s Big Oil and Big Auto buddies reap the short-term profits.’Ah, shaddap.  September 29th, 2026 10:29 PM Joseph Vazquez 297026 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/09/29/after-claiming-be-lone-holdout-juror-hostin-now-recalls ABC via SnapStream The View’s Sunny Hostin put herself at the center of a controversy last week when she bragged about being a lone holdout juror in a the high-profile murder trial of The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park. Things took a turn when contemporaneous reports showed other jurors pointing to a man as the holdout, with some noting two. Hostin appeared on ABC’s Behind the Table podcast to try to clean up the mess, saying they were each holdouts on different charges and scoffed at critics being too dumb to understand.“So, the amount of attention this got was a little bit outsized, I thought,” proclaimed executive producer Brian Teta.First up on the itinerary to help defend Hostin’s credibility was making sure people understood that while they found Daniel Rakowitz not guilty by reason of insanity, he still committed the crime and was not out on the streets like many online seemed to believe.Hostin noted he was still committed to a mental institution (Click “expand”):And that's, and that's, that's the problem. I think that people have with the insanity defense. They think that someone is ‘let off.’ When you find someone not criminally responsible, meaning they didn't have the criminal intent because of a mental disease or defect is what we used to call it. It means then that they get put into a psychiatric hospital and are held there.So, think about Hinckley, right? Think about other people. There are many that are still institutionalized in what is a secure facility and being treated for their mental illness. But they are not out on the street.This man, Daniel Racowitz, I believe he's probably in his 60s by now. And he is still in a mental institution where he should be because if someone is capable, it is so sick that they did what he did, imagine what he would do in general population in a prison or could do without being treated.“Imagine that person being in gen pop. Imagine that person killing a guard, another prisoner, a cafeteria worker. Think about that,” she argued, pointing out that a mental institution was better equipped to deal with him. After suggesting she a was a lone holdout juror in the murder trial of The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park, Sunny Hostin now says she remembers the male holdout juror. She claims he was only holding out on the charge of desecrating remains, she held out on the murder being due to… pic.twitter.com/qucPstsjXP— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 29, 2026 Moving on to “phase two of the last week's headlines,” as Teta put it, Hostin was given an opportunity to explain why her version of what happened was seemingly different from what was reported by newspapers at the time.Speaking about the accounts from other jurors quoted in the papers, Teta said, “they were talking about a man that other people pointed to as saying this is the reason we couldn't come to a verdict.” “I remember him,” Hostin replied.Hostin argued that both of them were holdouts, but they each held out on different charges, her on the insanity defense and him on the desecration of the victim’s body (Click “expand”):HOSTIN: Yes, he was insane when he killed her. And he said that. He confessed that he didn't realize that she was even dead. But then he decides to dismember her. I just thought that was so clear and gruesome and despicable to do that to someone's remains. I thought that he should be found guilty of that. And everyone else did too, except for this one guy. And we were like kind of looking at him, like that was the easy one.TETA: Right.HOSTIN: It was always the easy one. But we could not reach a unanimous verdict on that count.TETA: Okay. So when you were on the show, you said that you were the holdout juror.HOSTIN: I was.TETA: You didn’t mention this other person at the time.HOSITN: That’s a different count!They then pointed to the Newsday article, the only article to report the existence of two holdouts, as their proof. Brian Teta, The View's EP, walks Hostin through the quotes she gave to the newspapers at the time to try to iron out the inconsistences in her comments.Hostin says the facts of the case are too "complex for the average person":TETA: So there were quotes from those original… pic.twitter.com/h1MZuiCy75— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 29, 2026 As they were nearing the end of that part of their conversation, Hostin seemed to take a swipe at the intelligence of her critics. “So, while I know it's complex for the average person, it's not only, it wasn't complex to me then. And 35 years later, now as an attorney for over 30 years, it's not complex to me now,” she proclaimed.She ended with a flabbergasted, “Okay everybody?!”The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:ABC’s Behind the TableSeptember 29, 202601:20(…)BRIAN TETA: Well, we were talking about the holdout juror in the Lindsey Clancy case -SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah!TETA: - and the fact that people wanted to interview him, investigate him, out him. And you were very much against that.HOSITN: Well, it's unfair. I think it would have a chilling effect on the jury system. And it's such an important duty. And a lot of people try to avoid being on a jury because it takes time, takes time away from your family, and from work, and some of the topics can be very dark. People don't want to do it.And then I remembered, you know, my story that I actually, I was 22 or 23 years old, and I literally got called for jury duty. And I didn't want to do it just like everyone else. And I happened to be working with a group of attorneys. I was like a -TETA: Paralegalish?HOSTIN: Kind of a paralegal, not really, but I was a paralegal. I really got coffee and stuff for some of the attorneys and they were defense attorneys.And they encouraged me to do it. They said, this is a duty. You'll learn so much. They wanted me to go to law school. I wasn't really clear on that yet. And that experience made it much more clear to me, but it made it clear that I wanted to be a prosecutor and not a defense attorney. But they encouraged it. And they paid my salary while I was doing it, which I think is unusual.And I remembered being a holdout juror. And that's why I brought it up.TETA: Right.HOSTIN: I brought it up because as a holdout juror myself, I would be horrified that people would investigate me for doing my duty as an American science.TETA: So, the amount of attention this got was a little bit outsized. I thought, but -HOSTIN: I can't believe it. You're telling me that. But, I guess so.TETA: And there were several, there were several distinct phases of people talking.HOSTIN: Okay.TETA: For starters, they - and you came on the show and you talked about the idea of an insanity defense and you talked about -HOSTIN: It’s complex. It's complicated.TETA: You in this case helped convince other jurors that this person was not guilty by reason of insanity.HOSTIN: Yes.TETA: This was then portrayed -HOSTIN: Not guilty, but that doesn't mean that person is not responsible for it. The person did it without intent because the person was mentally ill.And this person that we found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity is because he had a lengthy psychiatric history. I'm talking, they brought in like boxes of medical records. He had been sick for years. So, it was very clear to me that he suffered from mental illness.And I should also say that one of the other reasons why I understood it was because I had people in my family that suffered from mental illness. And so, I was particularly aware of that.TETA: When you first talked about this, people were outrage saying she let this guy out on the street -HOSITN: No.TETA: - and what’s worse she's proud of it. And of course, he wasn’t let out on the street.HOSTIN: And that's, and that's, that's the problem. I think that people have with the insanity defense. They think that someone is ‘let off.’ When you find someone not criminally responsible, meaning they didn't have the criminal intent because of a mental disease or defect is what we used to call it. It means then that they get put into a psychiatric hospital and are held there.So, think about Hinckley, right? Think about other people. There are many that are still institutionalized in what is a secure facility and being treated for their mental illness. But they are not out on the street.This man, Daniel Racowitz, I believe he's probably in his 60s by now. And he is still in a mental institution where he should be because if someone is capable, it is so sick that they did what he did, imagine what he would do in general population in a prison or could do without being treated.TETA: Right. So, the idea is he's someplace that's equipped -HOSITN: To deal with someone like that that could kill someone while mentally ill. Imagine that person being in gen pop. Imagine that person killing a guard, another prisoner, a cafeteria worker. Think about that.TETA: Right. So the lazy take on this was she's got a matter of jail and she's proud of it and it’s disrespectful to the victims.HOSITN: Why would I be proud of that?TETA: Yes, I know.HOSITN: It's an experience that I had that I shared so that people would understand better. I think our lived experiences are a very good way on this show in particular to explain to people current events. Right.TETA: Let's go to phase two of the last week's headlines. So then, the next day, someone on the internet dug up a Daily News article from 1991 that profiled another different person that was a holdout juror. You were quoted in this article too.HOSTIN: Yes.TETA: But they were talking about a man that other people pointed to as saying this is the reason we couldn't come to a verdict.HOSTIN: I remember him.TETA: Explain. Tell people what was going on.HOSTIN: Oh my gosh.So as I recall and look it up for yourselves, there were three counts, I believe. One was, you know, second-degree murder, but it was intentional. Then there was the defense to that was, we could consider the insanity defense, meaning that he committed the crime, but he was not criminally responsible because of a mental disease or defect. And there was a third count or a third issue that we dealt with. And that issue was the desecration of Monika Beerle’s remains.And I felt really strongly about that as I did think the rest of the jury did because it was clear to me that once he killed her, he tried to hide that. I think that shows intent. And I think you have to know what you're doing if you go to such gruesome lengths to hide someone's body.TETA: So, your feeling was he was insane when he made - committed the murder?HOSTIN: Yes, he was insane when he killed her. And he said that. He confessed that he didn't realize that she was even dead. But then he decides to dismember her. I just thought that was so clear and gruesome and despicable to do that to someone's remains. I thought that he should be found guilty of that. And everyone else did too, except for this one guy. And we were like kind of looking at him, like that was the easy one.TETA: Right.HOSTIN: It was always the easy one. But we could not reach a unanimous verdict on that count.TETA: Okay. So when you were on the show, you said that you were the holdout juror.HOSTIN: I was.TETA: You didn’t mention this other person at the time.HOSITN: That’s a different count!TETA: It's a different count.HOSITN: [Laughter]TETA: There's another article in Newsday that - a Long Island paper.HOSITN: Okay.TETA: Again, 1991 that talks about two holdout jurors.HOSTIN: Yes.TETA: So that explanation would be -HOSTIN: That's right!TETA: - you and this guy.HOSTIN: Yes, that is correct.The jury found him initially guilty of intent.TETA: Right.HOSITN: I did not.TETA: So, when you talked about having to convince the other jurors, it was about them about the insanity -HOSITN: Inanity defense.TETA: - at the time of the murder.HOSITN: Yes, but I believe that all the jurors including that guy, we all believe that he dismembered her.TETA: All right. And this was all brought up because of the Lindsey - [laughter] - Lindsey Clancy jury.HOSITN: Yes! But does it make sense to you?TETA: It does. But it's more confusing than a five minute segment allowed us to tell.HOSITN: Yes!TETA: So there were quotes from those original articles that he brought up.HOSTIN: Sure.TETA: In the Daily News, you said, ‘we don't think he intended to kill her, but once he did, he dismembered the body in an effort to commit the perfect prime.’HOSITN: Correct. He was guilty of the dismemberment 100 percent.TETA: Right. That was The New York Times. Sorry. Daily News said, ‘yes, we believe he did it. I believe he butchered the body and almost committed the perfect crime.’HOSITN: Yes.TETA: ‘He knew what he was doing.’HOSITN: Yes. He knew what he was doing when he dismembered the body!TETA: But not when he killed her.HOSITN: Because we were very, what you have to understand is we sat through weeks and weeks of trial testimony, looking at gruesome pictures. And then, we get and we're sequestered. We can't go home. And we don't get, we get a mistrial on one of the most obvious counts. Imagine how it feels to be interviewed and asked, why didn't you convict him without people realizing the complexity underneath it.So, while I know it's complex for the average person, it's not only, it wasn't complex to me then. And 35 years later, now as an attorney for over 30 years, it's not complex to me now.So, when I was explaining it to The Times and the news, I guess Newsday or the Daily News or whatever, we were, all of us were really honing in on that mistrial piece.TETA: Yes.HOSITN: Because it felt bad.TETA: Okay.HOSITN: Okay everybody?!TETA: Probably not, but there we are.HOSITN: I mean, that's it.TETA: We've given all the explanation we can.(…) September 29th, 2026 5:39 PM Nicholas Fondacaro 297032 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2026/09/29/morning-joes-america-its-working-americans-vs-idle Mika Brzezinski Joe Scarborough MS NOW Morning Joe 9-29-26 Joe Scarborough and Bernie Sanders: same struggle!The Morning Joe host sounds ever more like the socialist guy ranting, in his inimitable Brooklyn accent, about "millionaires and billionaires." On today's show, Scarborough went off on Trump's claim that, thanks to him, people have gotten richer. Scarborough pointedly distinguished between billionaires and "working" Americans. Scarborough caricatures the rich as modern-day versions of Mr. Monopoly, running off with a bag of cash under the arm. The reality is that many, perhaps most, billionaires got there through very hard work, long hours, and ingenuity. Yes, there are some heirs and coupon clippers, but that's not the reality of the rich in America. The segment opened with a clip of President Trump claiming, with a soupçon of his trademark hyperbole, that “you’re twice as wealthy as you were a short time ago, every one of you, and that’s because of me.” Scarborough attributed that to: "the one big, beautiful billionaire bill. Awesome for billionaires, awesome for millionaires, pretty horrible for working Americans." Scarborough said he did not want to talk about billionaires, an odd claim from a man who could not stop saying the word. He would talk instead—no fewer than six times—about “working" people. Notice who Scarborough excludes from "working" Americans: people like the founder who still shows up. The surgeon with a brutal call schedule. My friend "Pogo" back in Ithaca, who started by emptying septic tanks at $25 a pop, and after years of grinding work, became a successful underground utility contractor. In Scarborough’s America, they are not working Americans. They are the cartoon. It is Bernie Sanders without the accent — the same kvetch about “millionaires and billionaires,” the same habit of treating wealth as proof you stopped being a person who works.   In Scarborough’s America, the Rich Don’t Work pic.twitter.com/FdyotMlPPR— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) September 29, 2026 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on the road with the same sermon on her current "Students vs. Billionaires" tour, which made a recent stop in Ithaca, pitching to students at my Cornell alma mater and Ithaca College. AOC told them a “moneyed elite” had “declared a class war against working-class Americans"--classic Marxist rhetoric. The irony: many of the people cheering that framing will shortly be sending their résumés to firms those ee-vil billionaires founded, scaled, or still run. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, the AI companies, the banks that fund the endowments, the hospitals and labs that sit on gifts from people the room is trained to hiss.  Mr. Monopoly Scarborough can gripe about gas and groceries all morning. What he will not do is admit that a lot of the people he has kicked out of “working Americans” got there by working like maniacs. The top hat is easier. The bag of cash photographs better. On Morning Joe, the rich are not allowed to have shown up for work. Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 9/29/26 6:00 am EDTDONALD TRUMP: On all the exchanges, 82 [days of record highs], in a little more than a-year-and-a-half, right? And people don't hear that. And as soon as that war ends, inflation's going to be eradicated totally. But nobody talks about that. And nobody talks about the fact that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Nobody talks about all of the incredible things. You're twice as wealthy as you were a short time ago, every one of you, and that's because of me. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Hmm. All right, President Trump, yesterday, pointing out all the things that he talks about that apparently no one else does. Good morning, and welcome to Morning Joe. It's Tuesday, September 29th. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wait, I'm confused. BRZEZINSKI: What? What are you confused about? SCARBOROUGH: Is the economy better than it's ever been? BRZEZINSKI: It's 30 seconds into the show, and you're already confused. SCARBOROUGH: Well, I'm, I, well, no, you, I'm always confused. BRZEZINSKI: That's true. SCARBOROUGH: I'm just particularly confused about that. BRZEZINSKI: Okay, so what, let's go through it. Let me help you. . . . WILLIE GEIST: The fact that he said everyone is twice as wealthy as they were, thanks to me, the people on the patio at Mar-a-Lago are twice as wealthy than they were. BRZEZINSKI: Twice as wealthy, if not more. GEIST: Regular Americans can't afford to fill up their cars with gas or buy groceries, so that's outrageously out of touch. SCARBOROUGH: The rich, Jonathan Lemire, have gotten richer. There's just no doubt about, and they've gotten richer because the Republicans, specifically, focused on their one big bill. Beautiful for billionaires, the one big, beautiful billionaire bill. Awesome for billionaires, awesome for millionaires, pretty horrible for working Americans. So we could talk about the billionaires. But why should we sit and talk about how great things are for billionaires when he does it all the time? Why should we sit and talk about how great things are going for, for CEOs and for multinational corporations when he does that all the time? He can talk about how that's going great. You know what we'll do? We'll just talk about the working man and woman. We'll talk about working Americans. BRZEZINSKI: How about, most Americans? SCARBOROUGH: Working Americans not doing well. Middle class Americans not doing well. Groceries up, gas up, diesel way up, hospital costs way up, thanks to Republicans' big, beautiful billionaires bill. Way up. Rent, way up. Mortgages, way up, bonds. And you're having a bit of a catastrophe right now, spiking to a level we haven't seen since 2007. Mortgage rate, way up. JONATHAN LEMIRE: Know what's down, Joe? SCARBOROUGH: What's that? LEMIRE: Economic growth. SCARBOROUGH: Economic growth down. Look at those numbers. Again, why don't we talk about how great things are going for billionaires? Because that's what he does. That's what Bessent does. That's what the Trump administration, and they're focused on that. They've been focused, and that's what all Republicans care about. They don't care about working Americans. If they did, they wouldn't have passed the bill they passed, which gutted healthcare for working Americans and gave tax cuts to billionaires and multinational corporations and millionaires. September 29th, 2026 5:04 PM Mark Finkelstein 297022 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/cnsnews/craig-bannister/2026/09/29/five-economic-facts-media-dont-want-you-know Biased legacy media are prone to report the news that supports their liberal narratives, and ignore news that doesn’t, particularly when it comes to the health of the nation’s economy. Here are five economic facts you might not have seen reported – because the media don’t want you to know about them:Inflation is lower during President Donald Trump’s second term in office than it was during the Biden Administration.Despite the war with Iran, the price of gas during Trump’s second term has never come close to its spike during Biden’s time in the White House.Real wages stagnated under Biden, but have grown in both of Trump’s presidencies.President Trump’s 2025 tax cut bill lowered the average household’s taxes by nearly three thousand dollars.Mortgage rates more than doubled under Biden, but fell in Trump’s first term and has held steady during his second.The average annual inflation rate during the Biden Administration (Feb. 2021-Jan. 2025) was 5.0%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In contrast, inflation averaged 1.9% during Trump’s first term (Feb. 2017-Jan. 2021) and 2.9% thus far during his second (Feb. 2025-Aug. 2026). Image MRC Graphic When it comes to the cost of a gallon of gas (regular), the all-time high was set on June 13, 2022 during Biden’s presidency, when it hit $5.11, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As of Tuesday, the highest price during either of Trump terms in office was $4.63, reached on May 11, 2026. Image MRC Graphic Adjusted for inflation, “real” weekly earnings increased 6.0% in Trump’s first term and failed to improve (0.0% change) during Biden’s four years. Since then, real wages have grown 1.3% during Trump’s second administration, as of the second quarter of this year.Real wages are published quarterly by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for median usual weekly earnings of full-time employees at least 16 years old. They incorporate data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and are expressed in terms of 1982-84 Consumer Price Index (CPI) dollars. Image MRC Graphic On July 4, 2025, Pres. Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill (H.R.1) into law, permanently extending tax cuts that were set to expire and adding new benefits. Without the new law, the tax cuts provided by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would have expired at the end of 2025. As a result, the average household’s taxes would have risen $2,900, according to analysis by the Tax Policy Center.  Image MRC Graphic During Pres. Trump’s first term, 30-year mortgage rates fell 32%, from 4.1% on January 19, 2017 to 2.8% on January 21, 2021. By the end of Biden’s White House stint, rates had spiked 151% to 7.0%. Since then, 30-year mortgage rates have remained steady, rising 1% from 6.96% on January 23, 2025 to 7.03% as of September 24, 2026. Mortgage rates are calculated and reported as weekly averages by Freddie Mac. Image MRC Graphic September 29th, 2026 4:15 PM Craig Bannister 297030 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/daniel-mccarthy/2026/09/29/maid-america-its-already-way-canada Screenshot via Newsmax2/Snapstream Legalized homicide is now the cause of one out of every 20 Canadian deaths.The country’s “medical assistance in dying” regime — MAID — has been in effect for 10 years and has taken an estimated 100,000 lives.The numbers, and shocking stories like Brigitte Stegemann’s, are a warning to America of what the euthanasia movement has in store for us.Stegemann was an 83-year-old woman who did not understand that the procedures she allegedly consented to would lead to her death.According to her granddaughter, when she explained to Stegemann what was going to happen, the elderly woman started crying and said she’d made a mistake.She was put to death anyway on July 10, over her granddaughter’s objections.The old and ill are vulnerable — even young and mostly healthy individuals know that hospitals and other medical facilities can be high-pressure environments in which people who are sick or in pain can’t always make clear and well-considered decisions.Patients are weak; medical establishments and their administrators are comparatively strong, so much so that even hints and suggestions can be taken as commands by the infirm or excessively trusting.In the context of euthanasia, there are no safeguards that can prevent killing without consent. The only variable is how often it happens.Yet homicide with consent is an abuse in itself, placing the medical profession in the service not of life but of death.With healthcare systems as bureaucratic as those of America and Canada — and the rest of the Western world — the decision to kill might as well be made by a machine, and in the name of efficiency, it probably won’t be long before artificial intelligence is calling the shots, even when they’re the lethal injections.It’s true that medicine can now prolong life without restoring health, making dying a lengthier process than it may once have been.As our population gets older, the right care for those nearing the end of their lives will become an ever bigger issue.But killing isn’t care, and the convenience that overburdened medical systems may find in eliminating high-cost patients will give rise to motives for euthanasia that are fundamentally mercenary.Is anything in modern medicine a model of highly personal relationships between patients and doctors?If there’s no deep human investment in anything else, what would make euthanasia any different?Whatever humanitarian rhetoric it may be dressed up in, killing by physicians will be just as impersonal as all of today’s treatments are.Cases like Stegemann’s in Canada already show this to be, and there are examples to be found wherever euthanasia has found a legal haven.That includes at present 13 American states — among them New York, Illinois and California — and European nations such as Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands.Significantly, all but one of the states that have so far embraced “death with dignity” are Democratic-leaning blue states: Republican-leaning Montana is the sole exception.If Democrats win big in federal and state-level elections this November, they’ll make America more like Canada at every opportunity, including where “assisted suicide” and euthanasia are concerned.When Bill Clinton said he wanted abortion in America to be “safe, legal and rare,” what he meant was that it should be legal up to birth — or afterward, in the case of partial-birth abortions — terminal for the unborn, and available on demand.Don’t buy a sales pitch for euthanasia that uses similar language:It won’t be safe or rare once it’s legal.It may not be the top priority for a Democratic Congress, but it will only be a matter of time before euthanasia and related practices are being made the law of the land nationwide, not just in blue states.Canada has crossed an ethical line no civilized nation should trespass.Yet there’s nothing to stop this murderous idea at the border — and there are people here who would welcome the Canadian system.The time to reject it is now, before it can gain greater purchase in this country.Medical assistance in dying is not only a mortal danger to the most vulnerable members of society, it’s deadly to the very principles of human dignity that our society is founded on.Like the medical profession, the law exists to protect life, not hasten death, and inverting the law’s purpose is itself a form of a suicide for nations, not just individuals.Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com. September 29th, 2026 3:31 PM Daniel McCarthy 297029 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/09/29/amanpour-insists-she-isnt-liberal-or-biased-just-pro-democracy PBS/CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour sat down with Talk Easy podcast host Sam Fragoso on Sunday for what was truly a surreal interview. Even though Amanpour is one of the most liberal media figures outside of MS NOW, she insisted that she isn’t biased and that she’s just someone who cares about democracy and human rights from a Catholic perspective.Fragoso wondered, “So, do you believe there's a moral bent to your work?” After Amanpour affirmed that she does, he continued, “You do? Mark Thompson, the chairman and CEO of CNN, he's also the editor-in-chief of CNN said, quote, ‘Our job is not to be moral arbiters. It is to report what's happening.’ So, is there daylight between his view and yours.” CNN/PBS host Christiane Amanpour may be one of the most liberal reporters around, but according to her "So, I was raised a Catholic. It's part of my moral and ethical and personal framework...if there's somebody there being killed or raped or attacked or excluded or hated because… pic.twitter.com/8YFENKMnTE— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 29, 2026 Amanpour did her best not to create a public spat with her boss, but she held firm while trying to wrap her sense of morality in Catholicism despite being one of the media’s biggest advocates for abortion:I don't know. I mean, he said moral arbiters, you ask me if there's a moral quality. So, I was raised a Catholic. It's part of my moral and ethical and personal framework. And the reason why I'm not too embarrassed to say this, although I think it's quite personal, I was just reading a very, very good opinion about the new British prime minister, Andy Burnham, who's also a Catholic, but there's also not a every Sunday Catholic, but he's written about how the notion of what we learn in the Bible and it's not just Catholics. It's Christians, it's Jews, it's Muslims. They all have this idea of social justice, of do unto to others, of reach out to the poor, the most downtrodden, all our parables, all the miracles, all the stories we hear in the Gospels and all the rest of it are about precisely that.First of all, the parables in the Gospels are about Jesus explaining the nature of God and man’s relationship to Him, not “social justice.”Nevertheless, Amanpour continued, “So, somehow that must have infiltrated me so that when I was confronted with it as a professional, I acted in a certain way, not thinking about religion or anything like that, but just thinking of the injustice that I was witnessing in not in all instances, but in a lot of the stuff that I that was covering. And I just think that when people tell us we're biased or when people tell us we're liberal or when people tell us this, no, we, I think—let me speak for myself, I don't see it in political terms. I see it in terms of people.”She also insisted, “And if there's somebody there being killed or raped or attacked or excluded or hated because of their gender, their race, their sexuality, their, whatever it might be, their ethnicity, then I know that that's wrong. Again, I don't think I'm political, but I have a deep respect for human rights.”Fragoso then wondered, “What do you mean you're not political?”Amanpour replied, “Because I, if it's being political holding up democracy, then I'm political. If it's political advocating for the truth and honesty, then I'm political. If it's political believing in human rights, I'm political.”Nobody asked Amanpour to be neutral between the Taliban and women or between Russia and Ukraine or between lowercase D democrats and dictators. The problem is Amanpour’s “Catholic” sense of morality has led her to go to bat for DEI, Hamas propaganda, climate reparations, Bernie Sanders-style socialism, the idea that Trump’s America is analogous to North Korea, men in women’s sports, that Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law is harmful, and polygamy. That’s not just somebody who believes in democracy. That is just another left-wing activist.  September 29th, 2026 3:30 PM Alex Christy 297028 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/09/29/fallon-and-stewart-try-paint-susan-collins-corrupt-fake-moderate Maine Senator Susan Collins may be the most liberal Republican in the Senate, but for NBC’s The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and Comedy Central’s Monday host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, that is not enough. Whether it was Fallon last Wednesday or Stewart on Monday, both men tried to suggest Collins is actually that moderate as she runs for re-election. Fallon also went even further as he tried to push a discredited ProPublica hit piece accusing Collins of corruption.Fallon got the ball rolling by performing a skit with Catherine Jarrett, “You guys hear about this? According to a bombshell new report, the FBI had enough evidence to investigate Republican Senator Susan Collins, and other powerful politicians for criminal bribery. But the investigation was dropped when Trump was re-elected. So here to respond is Senator Susan Collins.” Last Wednesday, Jimmy Fallon kicked off the Susan Collins hate fest by trying to make a big deal out of that ProPublica hit piece, "You guys hear about this? According to a bombshell new report, the FBI had enough evidence to investigate Republican Senator Susan Collins, and… pic.twitter.com/yOQOarciJa— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 29, 2026 Most of the skit featured Fallon asking some variation of "Are the allegations true?” and Fake Collins responding with something to the effect of, “Well, they're concerning, Jimmy. And I, for one, am very concerned about how concerning my concerns are. But after a lot of thought, I have made the difficult decision to continue supporting me.“At one point, Fallon claimed to recognize a pattern, “It's when you say you're concerned about something obviously bad but then you decide to support it anyway.”Fallon also alleged, “But then the contractor told your Super PAC that he was donating $150,000 through a fake LLC because they're super-vague and very difficult to get any background info on” and “Then two months later, he met with your office and told his company that you committed to giving him $32 million in federal funding.”Fake Collins ended the interview by claiming, “But after a lot of thought, here's what I'll say. For $150,000, I'll answer any question you want.”As Brad Slager at Mediaite writes:The CEO of Navatek, a company with government contracts in a number of states, including Maine, was popped for bribery charges. In an attempt to strike a deal, he spewed out a 50-page report naming anybody and everybody he could, from lobbyists to Hill staffers and up to congressional figures.Even though this was clearly going to be an investigation of mammoth proportions, ProPublica leans heavily on painting this as Collins being a primary target, and Trump exonerating her by hindering FBI operations, directly or indirectly.What is left out of the ProPublica story speaks to the slanted effort at play. The claims made by the convicted CEO do not involve the Collins campaign or her officers, but members of a PAC. That is only the start of the problems of this biased report, arriving a week early for its October Surprise stature.All of the investigation into Navatek and CEO Martin Kao predated the arrival of Trump. The bulk of the work took place during the Joe Biden administration. A Collins spokesperson noted all of her involvement wrapped up in 2021, after cooperating with the feds. A grand jury indicted Kao, with no charges levelled at Collins, and he pleaded guilty to the charges the following year.Fallon left all that out too.A few days later, Stewart tried to claim that Collins is a phony moderate."You know that Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown metaphor? I can't figure out if Susan Collins is Lucy or Charlie Brown. She is either Lucy—cynically pretending to be concerned about the obvious downstream effects of her votes, despite repeatedly voting that way—or she is almost criminally naive about the inevitable betrayal. "Oh, I think this time these justices will actually—No!" In fact, the only thing you can be sure of with Susan Collins is if you try and hold her accountable for these contradictions: She's gone. Jon Stewart stumps against Susan Collins because even the most liberal Republican isn't liberal enough, "You know that Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie brown metaphor? I can't figure out if Susan Collins is Lucy or Charlie brown. She is either Lucy—cynically pretending… pic.twitter.com/TpTtzyfvvC— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 29, 2026 After a clip montage, Stewart added, “There is a not a conveyance yet invented—car, escalator, elevator, door that can hold the Houdini-esque Susan Collins.”What the Fallon and Stewart rants show is that the “comedy” shows demand 100 percent uniformity. Any Republican is simply a bridge too far.Here are transcripts for the September 23 and 28 shows:Comedy Central The Daily Show9/28/202611:19 PM ETJON STEWART: You know that Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown metaphor? I can't figure out if Susan Collins is Lucy or Charlie Brown. She is either Lucy—cynically pretending to be concerned about the obvious downstream effects of her votes, despite repeatedly voting that way—or she is almost criminally naive about the inevitable betrayal. "Oh, I think this time these justices will actually—No!" In fact, the only thing you can be sure of with Susan Collins is if you try and hold her accountable for these contradictions: She's gone.REPORTER: Do you think you should release what he's got?MANU RAJU: Do you regret your vote on Kavanaugh?SUSAN COLLINS: I really don't have anything to add at this point.COLLINS: I don't know enough to make a judgment at this point.COLLINS: I have not reviewed the document yet.RAJU: You haven't reviewed the M.O.U. Yet?COLLINS: Block the door—REPORTER 2: Do you think this is a good deal for the United States?COLLINS: So I have not yet had a chance to review the MOU.STEWART: There is a not a conveyance yet invented—car, escalator, elevator, door that can hold the Houdini-esque Susan Collins.***NBC The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon9/23/202611:41 PM ETJIMMY FALLON: You guys hear about this? According to a bombshell new report, the FBI had enough evidence to investigate Republican Senator Susan Collins, and other powerful politicians for criminal bribery. But the investigation was dropped when Trump was re-elected. So here to respond is Senator Susan Collins.CATHERINE JARRETT/SUSAN COLLINS: Hi, Jimmy. Thanks for having me.FALLON: Yeah. So, these are very serious allegations here.JARRETT/COLLINS: They certainly are. And I, for one, am very concerned about what this says about the integrity of Susan Collins.FALLON: But you're Susan Collins.JARRETT/COLLINS: I know. And that's what's so concerning.FALLON: So, are the allegations true?JARRETT/COLLINS: Well, they're concerning, Jimmy. And I for, one, am very concerned about how concerning my concerns are. But after a lot of thought, I have made the difficult decision to continue supporting me.FALLON: Okay, I feel like you're just doing the Susan Collins thing.JARRETT/COLLINS: Really? What's that?FALLON: It's when you say you're concerned about something obviously bad but then you decide to support it anyway.JARRETT/COLLINS: Well, if that's true, it's very concerning, Jimmy. But after a lot of thought, I have made the difficult decision to continue supporting it.FALLON: Stop saying that. There's a lot of evidence in this article. The CEO of a government defense contractor says he met with the head of one of your Super PACs who asked for an illegal campaign donation in exchange for millions of dollars in government contracts.JARRETT/COLLINS: Wow, that is very concerning.FALLON: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the contractor told your Super PAC that he was donating $150,000 through a fake LLC because they're super-vague and very difficult to get any background info on.JARRETT/COLLINS: That is even more concerning.FALLON: Yeah, I know. Then two months later, he met with your office and told his company that you committed to giving him $32 million in federal funding.JARRETT/COLLINS: I don't want to sound like Chandler Bing here, but could I be any more concerned?FALLON: I don't care if you're concerned. Just answer the question. Did you accept bribes?JARRETT/COLLINS: Well, that's a very concerning question, Jimmy.FALLON: Yes.JARRETT/COLLINS: But after a lot of thought, here's what I'll say. For $150,000, I'll answer any question you want.FALLON: All right. Thank you. Senator Susan Collins, everyone.  September 29th, 2026 12:57 PM Alex Christy 297027 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2026/09/29/abccbsnbc-spend-29-minutes-ice-conflicts-0-illegal-crimes Image MRC Original Graphic The elitist media are pushing one narrative when it comes to illegal immigration enforcement that an “authoritarian” Trump administration has unleashed out-of-control ICE agents to terrorize local communities around the country. So it’s no surprise that the September 20 ICE shooting of illegal alien Wilber Rafael Garces Perez in Austin, Texas sparked three days of intensive coverage of alleged ICE overreach.  MRC analysts looked at the broadcast network (ABC, CBS, NBC) evening and morning shows and found they jammed their programs with 28 minutes, 53 seconds of ICE confrontation stories within just three days (September 20-September 23) of coverage. Overall, ABC spent the most amount of time on ICE confrontations (11 minutes, 44 seconds). NBC devoted 9 minutes, 56 seconds of coverage. CBS aired 7 minutes, 33 seconds on ICE.Over that same time, ABC, CBS, NBC spent 0 minutes on heinous crimes committed by illegal immigrants. The networks could have reported on the September 19 murder of UMass Dartmouth football player in Providence, Rhode Island, by a Nigerian national who overstayed his visa. The networks haven’t reported on any crimes involving illegal immigrants in the 9 days (September 20-September 29) since the Austin case. In fact, they’ve deliberately skipped over horrific cases involving illegals (as a recent NewsBusters study showed) for well over a month (August 25 - September 29).   @NBCNews correspondent @Maggie_Vespa segment on ICE as aired on the September 23, 2026 @Todayshow. pic.twitter.com/DPClPT2VBB— Geoffrey Dickens (@GCDickens) September 29, 2026 The tone of the September 23 NBC Today report was typical of last week’s coverage. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie introduced the story: “ICE arrests are continuing to soar nationwide and this morning new videos shedding light on troubling cases of people getting hurt, in some cases killed, in what the critics say are overly-aggressive tactics,” before throwing it to correspondent Maggie Vespa. Vespa opened the segment this way: “Just this week an American citizen was hospitalized here in Illinois in what authorities say was a case of mistaken identity. Local officials now sounding alarms from Michigan to Texas, as the Trump administration touts results. This morning, new videos and outrage over violent immigration arrests nationwide.” Vespa even included a clip from the Democratic Mayor of Evanston, Illinois, claiming that “ICE is terrorizing our communities; they’re looking for people, but they’re grabbing anybody with brown skin.”   For this study, MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, NBC Today) from September 20 through the morning of September 29. September 29th, 2026 12:32 PM Geoffrey Dickens 297025 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-spinnato/2026/09/29/ms-nows-ruhle-nothing-unusual-about-jack-smith-investigations MS NOW/SnapStream Before a Senate hearing featuring Jack Smith on Tuesday, where the former Biden-appointed special counsel was grilled by Republican lawmakers over his investigations into President Trump and the targeting of Republican politicians and media outlets, MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle proclaimed there was “nothing unusual” about Smith’s actions. Investigative reporter Carol Leonnig also complained about Republicans painting Smith as a “Democrat, like Obama and Biden.”The whole of Tuesday’s Money, Power, Politics focused on the Smith hearing, without mention of Smith’s targeting of records from conservatives, like the Media Research Center, in his Arctic Frost investigation.But nevertheless, Ruhel and Leonnig ran defense for Smith and insisted he was not a political actor. In the prolonged pre-game for the hearing, Leonnig mockingly described the Republicans' goal: Before the Jack Smith hearing, MS NOW investigative reporter Carol Leonnig defended the former special counsel and claimed there is no evidence that “he’s a Democrat along with Obama and Biden," before Stephanie Ruhle proclaimed, “There was nothing unusual about this… pic.twitter.com/RJ0Mr4mB7M— Nick (@nspin310) September 29, 2026 But the power of this moment for Republicans is essentially: “Hey, let's continue to slime Democrats, and let's continue to say that somebody in the Obama/Biden administration, which is part of that grand conspiracy case, we can talk about a little bit later. This is how Democratic presidents weaponize the administration and went after Donald Trump.”Leonnig then clarified, “even though this is not true,” as she read Smith’s statement that claimed that he was “no partisan.” She later continued to explain the GOP’s claims: “This is a chance to claim that he's a Democrat along with Obama and Biden. And it was all an effort to smear Donald Trump.”Ruhle interjected, “Claim it! But as you said,” as Leonnig responded, “Cannot prove it,” and laughed.Ruhle then minimized any thought of Smith doing anything wrong, as she echoed liberal disdain for Smith not quickly getting a Trump conviction:There was nothing unusual about this investigation. In fact, he was going overboard, potentially, to cross the T's and dot his I’s, which frustrated many.Nothing unusual, except for obtaining text messages from Republican congresspeople for media outlets.Leonning continued to explain the “frustration” with Smith, and claimed Smith should have tried the Trump classified records case in DC instead of Florida:He actually decided to bring this case in Florida, the classified records case, when he could have brought it in DC. Prosecutors who were trained national security lawyers basically said, that worked on his team, “What are you doing?” This is a terrible idea to go to Florida because we might likely get Judge Aileen Cannon, and then the case is dead.Leonnig closed with claims that Smith wanted to be fair: “And here he was going to Florida because it was the fairer thing. He didn't want to appear to be going to a Democratic, basically, jury, right, in DC. He wanted to show the world my facts stack up.”Even while defending Smith against the grilling he was about to receive on Capitol Hill, MS NOW showed their clear want of Trump’s imprisonment.The transcript is below. Click "expand":MS NOW’s Money, Power, PoliticsSeptember 29, 20269:16:08 AM Eastern(...)CAROL LEONNIG: But the power of this moment for Republicans is essentially, ‘Hey, let's continue to slime Democrats.’ And let's continue to say that somebody in the Obama/Biden administration, which is part of that grand conspiracy case we can talk about a little bit later, this is how Democratic presidents weaponize the administration and went after Donald Trump. This is how Jack Smith is just - even though this is not true. Jack Smith is going to say in his opening statement, ‘I'm no partisan. I'm just an investigator, a career guy for two decades.’ This is a chance to claim that he's a Democrat along with Obama and Biden. And it was all an effort to smear Donald Trump –STEPHANIE RUHLE: Claim it! But as you said, LEONNIG: Cannot prove it. [Laughter] RUHLE:  - There was nothing unusual about this investigation. In fact, he was going overboard, potentially, to cross the T's and dot his I’s, which frustrated many.LISA RUBIN: And yes, to answer your question –LEONNIG: Yes, it did. In fact, in that frustration, Steph, I wrote a while ago - [To Rubin] I apologize.RUBIN: Go ahead.LEONNIG: He actually decided to bring this case in Florida, the classified records case, when he could have brought it in DC. Prosecutors who were trained national security lawyers basically said, ‘What are you doing - that worked on his team - what are you doing? This is a terrible idea to go to Florida because we might likely get Judge Aileen Cannon, and then the case is dead. And that's what they were saying internally. Nobody knew it at the time, but we reported it not long after. My facts stack up, that show hundreds and hundreds of pages of some of the most secure government secrets that only a handful of people can even look at. Some national security prosecutors who were trained in counterintelligence didn't have the authority to look at some of these documents in Donald Trump's shower.(...) September 29th, 2026 12:15 PM Nicholas Spinnato 297024 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2026/09/29/cnns-deep-state-tool-smith-spying-conservative-orgs-routine Screenshot via CNN/Snapstream An hour into Tuesday’s bombshell Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former Special Counsel Jack Smith, CNN’s senior Justice correspondent Evan Perez defended Smith’s surveillance of conservative organizations through subpoenas and seizures of electronic communications — which Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed included this organization, the Media Research Center— as not anything close to “weaponization” but merely “a routine part of building a case if you’re doing a criminal case.”Perez — who was friends with the firm Fusion GPS that peddled the Steele dossier  — was cued up by Situation Room co-host Wolf Blitzer admitting Smith had “secured two — yes, two federal criminal indictments against President Trump under the Biden Justice Department.”Blitzer further fretted: “Smith has long drawn the fury of President Trump and his allies, who say those investigations were politically motivated.”Asked to explain what he thought would unfold, Perez huffed that viewers would “hear a lot from Republicans who are trying to paint the investigations that Jack Smith oversaw as politicized, as — as weaponization against Republicans, against the president of the United States.” INSANE: CNN’s Evan Perez — who was a media lackey for his friends at Fusion GPS — defends Jack Smith’s investigation as not at all proof of “weaponization,” adding that spying on conservative organizations (which, in this case, include @theMRC and The @FDRLST) is “a routine part… pic.twitter.com/S6dsCnerWv— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 29, 2026 Perez then laid the predicate for going after conservative groups:Of course, at the time, he was former president when Jack Smith was investigating him. And what you hear there, what you heard there from — from — from Smith is him backing up everything that happened in that investigation, that everything he believes that was done — was done not for political purposes, as the President and some of his Republican allies in this room want to point out, want to make it out to be, that what he was doing was following the law and trying to bring a case.As though it was a burden for him to have to talk about it, Perez lamented, “there is going to be a lot of focus already, is a lot of focus on phone records belonging to members of Congress, bank records belonging to conservative organizations that were subpoenaed as part of this investigation.”Perez then asserted there’s nothing to see there, or raise concern about government overreach:[W]e know that that’s a routine part of building a case if you’re doing a criminal case, you — you subpoena those records as part of an effort to — to make that case. Republicans say that they should never have that — should never have happened because that was politicization. And so, that’s what a lot of the focus that we’re going to hear about the questioning — the questioning of Jack Smith over the next several hours.Amid the latest seemingly gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Lindsey Clancy case, Blitzer and Perez returned to the Smith hearing in the 11:00 a.m. Eastern hour. Blitzer fawned over Smith as having “delivered a very defiant message directly to his critics on that Senate Judiciary Committee” as the GOP insisted “he acted politically and should be prosecuted himself.”Blitzer further portrayed Republicans as unserious (and thus his friends in the Democrat Party as serious): “Very dramatic stuff, Evan. Republicans have been aggressive in their questioning so far, right?” WATCH: CNN celebrates Jack Smith as “very defiant” against the “very dramatic” and “aggressive” Republicans who don’t care about anything other than “reframing the events of January 6”....Blitzer: “But this morning, Jack Smith delivered a very defiant message directly to his… pic.twitter.com/RysM0YBliU— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 29, 2026 Perez again went along with this, dismissing the GOP’s questioning as exclusively performative and to “refram[e] the events of January 6”:That’s right, Wolf. They are very aggressive in the questioning. But I will say, you know, in between the time that they’re not — when the Republicans are not speaking, a lot of them have left the room, and it gives you a sense of what the purpose of this hearing is. This is not so much about getting information from Jack Smith. It’s about reframing the events of January 6 and those investigations that Jack Smith oversaw, and part of that, the job of some of the members of Congress, some of these senators, is to frame some of the actions by the investigators as targeting Republicans.This cued up a Smith exchange with Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) that Perez provided little context to, thus purposefully making Kennedy’s trademark quips seem inappropriate (click “expand”):PEREZ: Listen to this exchange between Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana and Jack Smith about some of the actions taken during this investigation.KENNEDY: You saw just the records of the Republicans, and you knew that violated the speech and debate clause, didn’t you?SMITH: That is incorrect. We sought to comply with —KENNEDY: Did you take ConLaw?SMITH: — I’m sorry, Senator?KENNEDY: Were you in the quad playing Frisbee during the ConLaw at Harvard Law School?SMITH: I did take constitutional law, yes.KENNEDY: Well, then you had to know it violated the Speech and Debate Clause. In fact, when you went to Judge Boasberg, you didn’t even tell him you were seeking the phone records of members of Congress, did you? Because you knew he wouldn’t agree. He would. He would say, hey, counsel, anybody who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog knows that this violates the Constitution. But you didn’t tell him, did you?SMITH: We sought non-disclosure orders from —KENNEDY: You didn’t tell him, did you?SMITH: — in seeking non-disclosure orders, we did not.KENNEDY: Didn’t tell him. But you’re unbiased. You have no personal feelings. You make me want to throw up in my mouth.PEREZ: And, Wolf, you know, that’s that gives you a little bit of the flavor of what’s going on in the room behind me. Look, I mean, the — the investigation that they’re talking about, of course, is about the President — the then-President of the United States, Donald Trump, trying to avoid, you know, the — the — the certification of his losing that election. And, of course, the part of the investigation was looking into whether there were people like Rudy Giuliani calling members of Congress, Republicans who would have been working with them to try to do that. And so, of course, it would be Republican members of Congress whose phone records, the toll records that would have been would have been subpoenaed. Democrats were not involved in that. And of course, that gives you a sense of this investigation.To see the relevant CNN transcript from September 29, click here. September 29th, 2026 12:08 PM Curtis Houck 297023 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/steve-malzberg/2026/09/29/ms-nows-sharpton-vows-he-wont-allow-grand-jury-decision-be-final Last week, after hearing from 43 witnesses and reviewing physical and digital evidence, a Mississippi grand jury found no evidence of criminal conduct in the death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, whose body was found after his disappearance during a Fourth of July boating trip. But Sunday on MS NOW's PoliticsNation, host Reverend Al Sharpton made it crystal clear he was not going to let that decision go unchallenged. It has to be racism! Last Thursday, Wells family attorney Ben Crump held a press conference making claims that Sharpton followed up on as he began his segment on the grand jury findings. SHARPTON: Ben Crump, revealed on Thursday that the state autopsy found no water in Nolan's lungs, airways or stomach and documented two contusions on the back of his head.Sharpton then turned to MS NOW reporter Maya Eaglin, and during his introduction, revealed his activism as it relates to this case.SHARPTON: Maya, I've been involved in this story in support of parents to find out the truth of what ever happened, or in my capacity as president of National Action Network. I delivered the eulogy at Nolan Wells' funeral in July and have stood with this family as they've pushed for answers in this case. I've also released a statement regarding the grand jury's decision that I strongly disagree with the conclusion that there was no criminal wrongdoing, and I will not allow this decision to become the final word on Nolan's death. Not that Sharpton has any actual evidence of wrongdoing.SHARPTON: I'm not saying who did what, but I'm saying, how do you rule out when when we see these findings of the injury on his head and others and you can't tell us what happened, how do we know there was no criminal activity by anybody? Maybe hearing from 43 witnesses and looking over physical and digital evidence, police reports, interviews, videos, images and maps, had something to do with that decision, something Sharpton did not do. He then threw it to Eaglin.SHARPTON: So let's talk about the autopsy. Both the state medical examiner and the family's independent pathologist left Nolan's cause and manner of death undetermined. What does that tell us, and how does it square with the grand jury claiming the evidence was consistent with drowning? EAGLIN: What the state autopsy showed, as you also mentioned, no water in his lungs or his stomach or his throat....Ben Crump has a lot of concerns as to how this jury could determine that his death was consistent with drowning if there was no water in some of his organs. We're seeing some pushback from the District Attorney, she is saying and other medical experts that that is not necessarily the only way to determine if someone has drowned or not. But right now, there's just so many question marks, and it's hard to parse through conflicting reports and understanding what really happened and what not. What Nolan's family says is they're not going to stop investigating until they get definitive answers.SHARPTON: Absolutely. And so many of us that support the family, whatever it is. But saying that there are other ways other than water in your lungs and other places, well, they didn't tell us what those other ways are. If Sharpton had been legitimately interested in finding out, he might have done some research and found that Louisiana coroner Dr. Christopher Tape said in a statement, "Paradoxically, you won't find water in the airways for some of these drownings for someone who's been dead for a while necessarily. After a few days, the water is going to distribute everywhere, so it becomes difficult to conclude." Sharpton then mentioned the issue of Snapchat data having been removed from Nolan's phone, prior to it being retrieved by the family, according to a forensic expert hired by the family. Sharpton did point out that the DA found that the deletions came from Snapchat users and not from someone physically accessing Nolan's phone. After further discussion of the phone with Eaglin, Sharpton asked her about reopening the investigation should new evidence emerge. EAGLIN: I think that the family is going to push forward with this. It is very clear, as you know, Rev, that they do not want this to be the end of the story.To her credit Eaglin did note that Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath ripped Crump following his presser, "his conduct in this case, have demonstrated that he is not worthy of our trust.," before concluding, "Nolan's family and his legal team, they are not giving up the fight."Sharpton then reinforced his bias on the issue.SHARPTON: And neither are civil rights groups like National Action Network. MSNBC and MS NOW have clearly allowed Reverend Al to keep race-hustling on the weekdays and see no conflict of interest for their "news" channel.  September 29th, 2026 11:04 AM Steve Malzberg 297016 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2026/09/29/kimmel-effusively-praises-mamdani-come-la-and-be-our-mayor There are softball interviews, and then there is whatever ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel did on his Monday show with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As Jimmy Kimmel Live! started its week-long Brooklyn field trip, the part of Kimmel that seeks to portray himself as someone who speaks truth to power took a backseat to the part of him that is fangirls over left-wing politicians as he invited Mamdani to come back to Los Angeles and “be our mayor.”Before Kimmel introduced Mamdani, Kimmel played a montage of conservative media personalities warning about what would happen to New York if Mamdani were to get elected. However, given the left-wing audience, Mamdani was greeted with a boisterous ovation, which led Kimmel to begin, “I think this means you're doing a good job. I have to tell you, I live in Los Angeles, and that is not the reception our mayor would get. So, how is the complete and total destruction of New York going?” Jimmy Kimmel is taking his show on the road to Brooklyn this week and is already gushing over Zohran Mamdani, "You focus on really, I think, simple, common sense things. Like, we talked about the potholes, obviously, you filled a lot of those potholes. Do you think Mayor Adams… pic.twitter.com/HBfwU7rmD7— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 29, 2026 Mamdani retorted, “You know, it's proceeding as planned.Kimmel then continued with the gush-fest, “This is really, I think you've taken an interesting tack. It's what you said you were going to do, but, you know, most of the time mayors don't do what they say they were planning to do. And you focus on really, I think, simple, common-sense things. Like, we talked about the potholes, obviously, you filled a lot of those potholes. Do you think Mayor Adams goes ‘Why didn't I fill the potholes? That would have been a good idea.’ You have creative ideas that seem to be successful so far. Like this parents’ night out idea.”Mamdani replied, “I think the two most valuable things to parents are time and money, and we wanted to give them back a little bit of that. And so we created a night parents could finally go out to the date they've been putting off, some of them for years, and know they didn't have to shell out for a babysitter.”For Kimmel, the hagiographical interview was just beginning. Later, he recalled Mamdani’s public relationship with President Trump, “You seem to be doing a great job in New York but could move to Washington and hang out at the Oval Office all day. Like if you texted him a selfie of us right now—” Later, the gushing continues, "I know you're focused on your job right now and the city. Would you come to L.A. and be our mayor after this? We got a lot of potholes." pic.twitter.com/Hnn7PMZpKn— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) September 29, 2026 After Mamdani declined, Kimmel continued, “I’m sure you—listen, I know you're focused on your job right now and the city. Would you come to L.A. and be our mayor after this? We got a lot of potholes.”Kimmel, like so many others in the media, wants to paint Mamdani as the guy who just fixes the potholes, but the reason why Mamdani is fixing more potholes is because there are more potholes to fix due to last year’s nasty winter. Even if Mamdani’s pothole-fixing record was something to praise, Mamdani’s critics that Kimmel mocked at the beginning were right to warn about his unwillingness to combat anti-Semitism and his associations with terrorist sympathizers.  Here is a transcript for the September 28-taped show:ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!9/29/202612:42 AM ETJIMMY KIMMEL: I think this means you're doing a good job. I have to tell you, I live in Los Angeles, and that is not the reception our mayor would get. So, how is the complete and total destruction of New York going?ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, it's proceeding as planned.KIMMEL: This is really, I think you've taken an interesting tack. It's what you said you were going to do, but, you know, most of the time mayors don't do what they say they were planning to do. And you focus on really, I think, simple, common-sense things. Like, we talked about the potholes, obviously, you filled a lot of those potholes. Do you think Mayor Adams goes "Why didn't I fill the potholes? That would have been a good idea." You have creative ideas that seem to be successful so far. Like this parents’ night out idea.MAMDANI: Yeah.KIMMEL: Explain what that is exactly.MAMDANI: I think the two most valuable things to parents are time and money, and we wanted to give them back a little bit of that. And so we created a night parents could finally go out to the date they've been putting off, some of them for years, and know they didn't have to shell out for a babysitter.…KIMMEL: You seem to be doing a great job in New York but could move to Washington and hang out at the Oval Office all day. Like if you texted him a selfie of us right now—MAMDANI: Jimmy, I love you, but I love housing more.KIMMEL: Okay. I’m sure you—listen, I know you're focused on your job right now and the city. Would you come to L.A. and be our mayor after this? We got a lot of potholes.MAMDANI: You know, it's three works for me, always. It’s New York City. September 29th, 2026 9:50 AM Alex Christy 297021 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/jorge-bonilla/2026/09/29/midterms-approach-evening-news-shifts-polling-doom The 2026 midterm election is a little over a month away, and you can tell when watching the Elitist Media evening news. There is now a deliberate effort underway to push polling DOOM as conventional wisdom, in service of Democrat majorities in the next Congress.Watch as the CBS Evening News stuck polling doom into its White House roundup, citing President Trump’s negative polling number but no other comparable data point: WATCH: With the midterms approaching, the network evening news partially shifts to polling DOOM!!11! Trump numbers bad, nothing on voter disdain for Dems. Here's the @CBSEveningNews' entry:TONY DOKOUPIL: We turn to politics now. President Trump's approval rating has hit an… pic.twitter.com/MPV0i0qFPE— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 29, 2026 CBS EVENING NEWS9/28/266:41 PMTONY DOKOUPIL: We turn to politics now. President Trump's approval rating has hit an historic low- 37% according to a new Wall Street Journal poll. President George W. Bush polled at similar numbers just before the midterms in 2006 and his party went on to lose both the House and the Senate. Our Nancy Cordes has more now from The White House.DONALD TRUMP: I love Iowa. I've always been very strong with Iowa.NANCY CORDES: On the hunt for economic wins, President Trump touted today a planned steel mill in Iowa that is slated to open in 2030.TRUMP: We have the best economy, the biggest investment in the history of our country.CORDES: The economy is growing and unemployment is low. But high inflation and high gas prices due to the war with Iran have pushed Trump's approval ratings on the economy to near-record lows. And that is causing headwinds for GOP candidates like Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, who’s running for Senate.ASHLEY HINSON: We need a resolution to end the war as quickly as possible and the President can do that.CORDES: Hinson was in the Oval Office today when Trump was asked why he thinks his party is struggling in Iowa, a state he won by 13 points.TRUMP: I'm surprised. I- first of all, the polls are fake.CORDES: Over the weekend, Trump rejected Iran's latest offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz calling the terms unacceptable. Today a U.S. official confirmed that 8 Marines were injured in an Iranian attack earlier this month, bringing the total number of wounded service members to 861. Tony.DOKOUPIL: Nancy, thank you very much. You’ll notice that there is no specific poll cited in the report. There is only the reference to Trump’s negatives on Iran and the economy, but no citation as to where the data is coming from. There is little more than a clumsy insertion of a reference to negative polls, with the expectation that the viewer will understand the message.NBC ran a similar report on the Nightly News: WATCH: @NBCNightlyNews subtly pushes polling DOOM ahead of the midtermsTOM LLAMAS: Tonight, President Trump saying Iran's recent offer to open the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. meets its demands is unacceptable. But the U.S. is still talking with the regime. Our Gabe Gutierrez… pic.twitter.com/qGPMo2fsUL— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 29, 2026 NBC NIGHTLY NEWS9/28/26TOM LLAMAS: Tonight, President Trump saying Iran's recent offer to open the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. meets its demands is unacceptable. But the U.S. is still talking with the regime. Our Gabe Gutierrez at The White House today pressing the president back.DONALD TRUMP: In fact, they’re all coming back...GABE GUTIERREZ: Tonight, President Trump telling us that U.S. talks with the Iranian regime are still on through mediators. Has your team spoken to Iran today?TRUMP: Yeah, they have.GUTIERREZ: Despite President Trump rejecting Iran's latest offer where it said it would stop attacking commercial oil tankers and reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. meets its demands.TRUMP: We're going to win that war very soon. It’ll be over. And the gas and gas prices will come tumbling down.GUTIERREZ: The administration now argues it has the upper hand in negotiations, though it's in no hurry.TRUMP: Massive amounts of oil are coming out through the Hormuz Strait. (VIDEO SWIPE) I like making a deal too but I'm not- that deal would not be acceptable.GUTIERREZ: But the war and stubbornly high gas prices, averaging around $4.48 a gallon, pressuring Republicans with less than 40 days to go until the midterms. The president today touting a new $15 billion steel mill to be built in Iowa.TRUMP: The largest steel plant in American history. In the great state of Iowa.GUTIERREZ: A state he won by 13 points in 2024. We pressed the president why recent polls show much tighter races for the Senate and House this year. Why are Republicans do you think, having to work so hard to hold on to these seats?TRUMP: I don't know, I love Iowa, I've always been very strong with Iowa… (VIDEO SWIPE) …but I'm surprised. First of all, the polls are fake.GUTIERREZ: Iran says it's prepared for a, quote, “Doomsday War,” but that it stands ready for diplomacy. The president, late today flatly denying a report that he’d offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear concessions. Tom.LLAMAS: Gabe, thank you.Gabe Gutierrez hits on some of the same notes as did Nancy Cordes. His reference to polling numbers for the president, though, is much softer than what we saw in Cordes’s report. Nonetheless, Gutierrez asked his indirect poll question and got a reaction from President Trump.It bears repeating that you see mentions of unfavorable presidential approval ratings but no specific poll citation. Why is this, you might ask? For starters, the American public has conveyed that they don’t have much affection for Democrats, either. This complicates their messaging. Expect to see more of this particular use of polling, or references to polling, as the election approaches. We leave you with the words of the great Rush Limbaugh, which ring as true today as when he first uttered them live:The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you. September 29th, 2026 12:32 AM Jorge Bonilla 297020 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2026/09/28/newsbusters-podcast-google-networks-skip-gop-anti-fraud-task-force Is billions of dollars of fraud against America’s taxpayers NOT newsworthy? That's what you would find when looking on Google News or the elitist broadcast networks. Free Speech America Associate Editor Luis Cornelio came to share his research on Google News, joined by our evening news analyst Jorge Bonilla. Luis found Google News blocked out any stories on the White House task force on fraud, led by Vice President J.D. Vance. The Trump administration has taken at least 51 key actions and victories against fraud since February, ranging from massive healthcare fraud takedowns to the suspension of billions of dollars in government funding. Yet, Google News featured none of them in its top 20 morning listings. They skipped 257 stories on the subject. Then there's more of the acidic aftermath of the White House press-pass denial of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. ABC This Week host Martha Raddatz took exception to Attorney General Todd Blanche sticking up for the ban. He argued “the complete misinformation and the inaccuracy and the one-sided news out of certain organizations does become a national security issue." So Raddatz tried to force him to say they would screen journalists for national secuirty before they get on the press plane? He told her not to put words in his mouth. Democrats don't need to say anything like that in their Sunday-show interviews. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) did NOT get interrupted and pressed. No [CROSSTALK] on his portion of the transcript. this. Raddatz did ask a couple of decent questions about how Democrats as a party don’t look great on their voter approval, and about Troy Jackson, but they set up long, uninterrupted answers.On Saturday, New York Post writer Lydia Moynihan and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer pushed back on against CNN host Abby Phillip’s implication that Trump is the most grievous offender of press freedom, and that you can’t change the subject to Biden – whose press shop energetically ignored and suppressed New York Post White House reporter Steven Nelson for years.Speaking of bias by omission, Bill D'Agostino found ABC, CBS, and NBC haven’t breathed a word on-air about the highly incriminating foreign money scandal involving Democratic mega-PAC ActBlue. In June, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones testified to the House Administration Committee that her company had implemented a “passport verification process” which would filter out any illegal foreign donations. But on September 16, it was revealed that that process involved merely checking to ensure that a donor had submitted a passport number with a valid number of digits, not a valid passport. Democrat scandals...."die in darkness," as they say.On NBC's Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker felt she had to point out that Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed is NOT a communist, that he said on her show that he's a capitalist.  The man campaigned with Hasan Piker, who effusively praised mass-murdering Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong as a "great leader."  He wants to end all private health insurance in a "Medicare For All" scheme. He is not a capitalist, no matter what he claims he is.Finally, the Sunday shows did not cover the breaking news on the thwarted terrorist attack at Britain's Fairford Royal Air Force Base, home to several U.S. Air force units. None of the shows on ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN covered the potential attack. CBS and NBC did, however, feature their regularly scheduled interviews with leaders of the Iranian terror regime.Enjoy the podcast below. The audio is here.  September 28th, 2026 10:45 PM Tim Graham 297013 https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/emily-keegan/2026/09/28/abc-news-blames-ice-raids-increasing-prices-beef ABC via SnapStream On Sunday, ABC’s World News Tonight With David Muir tried to tie the deportation of illegal immigrants to the public’s irritation with prices and blamed the rising cost of beef on ICE raids and stoked fears the administration was targeting legal, documented meat packing workers. Desperate for a story, ABC correspondent Steve Portnoy condemned President Trump for the rising inflation on groceries and gas, tying it back to Trump’s “rejection” to make a quick and easy deal with Iran.Citing a joint statement from Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas cattlemen groups, ABC sought to tug at the heartstrings of their fan base with the mention of ICE raids. Having called alert to, “a massive chilling effect on legal documented workers,” in which, “these types of disruptions will lead to higher beef prices for consumers,” the ranchers were quick to point a finger for their dwindling workforce.Seeming to place blame on immigration enforcement, Portnoy seemed skeptical of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who stated, “ICE is targeting heinous criminals and immigrants with final orders of removal.” Even with these cattlemen groups having picked a fight with ICE, the reality was, those workers didn’t have anything to fear because they have authorization to work in the United States. Yet, they still chose to shelf their job due to immigration enforcement presence in the area. Instead of placing blame on people actually doing their job, maybe these ranchers should reconsider who they hire.  Having already honed in on the price of ground beef, “averaging about $7 a pound,” Portnoy was quick to mention the next expense on everyone’s list: Gas. With a voter having claimed, “We know the economy for us is not great,” Portnoy pointed out the range of gas station prices. Portnoy quoted GasBuddy, the mobile app equipped with finding the cheapest gas stations near you, in which, “Americans are paying an average 4.45, about $1.50 more than at the start of the Iran war.”Portnoy turned the conversation into a rant on Trump’s ongoing war with Iran. With Trump’s claim that, “Oil will come dropping down as soon as Iran gives up, as soon as the war is over, which will be soon,” it's no surprise Portnoy put a timer on his promise.In an attempt to tie his argument in a perfect bow, Portnoy recounted the recent deal offered by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in a similar deal made during the summer. In his framing, Portnoy made Iran seem like the sensible ones.Due to Trump’s rejection of the offer, and keeping up with the omission, Portnoy left his audience with no other choice than to blame Trump for the rising costs. Portnoy kept clear of discussion of Iran’s recent attacks on cargo vessels and commercial oil tankers in the Strait, which resulted in the U.S. retaliating.When it comes to inflation, it was the drum the media would keep thumping until Election Day.Trump was playing a losing game against the liberal agenda.The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:ABC’s World News Tonight With David MuirSeptember 27, 202610:11:49 p.m. EasternLINSEY DAVIS: Tonight, a warning that could hit Americans where they feel it every day at the grocery aisle and around the dinner table. Beef prices are already soaring. Now a trade group warns immigration rates could bring another chill to an industry already under pressure. Here's ABC's Steven Portnoy tonight.[CUT TO PACKAGE]STEVEN PORTNOY: Tonight, American ranchers speaking out about ICE raids. Cattlemen's groups in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Writing in a joint statement that ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on legal documented workers- warning, “these types of disruptions will lead to higher beef prices for consumers.” The Homeland Security secretary says ICE is targeting heinous criminals and immigrants with final orders of removal.But ground beef is already averaging about $7 a pound, and that's just one example of the price pressures Americans face.SHAWN BASS (VOTER IN HENRICO COUNTY, VA): We go to the grocery store, we buy gas. We know the economy for us is not great.PORTNOY: This Detroit gas station is now charging $6 a gallon, an outlier. But nationwide, GasBuddy says Americans are paying an average 4.45, about $1.50 more than at the start of the Iran war.Tonight, President Trump again arguing prices will soon fall.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oil will come dropping down as soon as Iran gives up, as soon as the war is over, which will be soon.PORTNOY: But Trump this weekend, rejecting a deal offered by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. again signs on to the terms of this summer's short lived cease fire. The Democratic-leaning veterans group VoteVets now pledging to spend $60 million to defeat Republican candidates this fall.(...) September 28th, 2026 10:24 PM Emily Keegan 297019