The Biggest Pro-Trump Mega-Media Monopoly Ever (it’s already distorting war coverage)

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Arlen Grossman



But this mega-media monopoly can be stopped. Here’s how.

[I’m coming back to Robert Reich because he understands what is important and what we should be focused on (and we mostly agree on everything). This particular article is important because a democracy requires a fair and free press (and I have a journalism degree so the subject is of special interest to me). If rich and/or MAGA groups control most of how Americans get their information, whatever we have left of a free press will be gone, and American democracy will completely disappear.–-The TBPR Editor]

By Robert Reich/ robertreich.substack.com/ March 6, 2026

On Sunday, CBS’s erstwhile flagship newsmagazine “60 Minutes” opened with an extended adulatory interview of Reza Pahlavi, son of the late exiled Shah of Iran, whom Trump presumably is auditioning to be Iran’s post-invasion leader.

Although Pahlavi is in Paris and hasn’t lived in Iran for nearly a half-century, CBS’s Scott Pelley fed the exiled prince softball questions and allowed him to avoid talking about his father’s record of brutal repression. Pelley even added, in a wishful voiceover, that “Pahlavi told us that there are units within the military and the police that would turn on the hard-line government. He says that many but not all troops could be given amnesty in a process of national reconciliation.”

This isn’t news. It’s pablum from the White House. “60 Minutes” was once a reliable source of tough reporting. Now it’s becoming a shill for the Trump regime. 

It soon could get far worse. CBS News is on the verge of becoming part of the largest pro-Trump media monopoly in America.

Two of the nation’s biggest news organizations — CBS News and CNN — along with CBS entertainment (home to Stephen Colbert) and Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart) and HBO (John Oliver) and TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) — are all about to become one giant mega-media monopoly under the control of Trump allies and suck-ups: multibillionaire Larry Ellison and Ellison’s son, David. 

It’s not too late to stop this, and I’ll tell you how in a moment, but I’d like you to pause and imagine how readily this new pro-Trump media giant can mislead America about what Trump is doing and silence criticism of Trump. 

It could make Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post look scrupulous by comparison. 

Trump cares more about TV news than he does about his presidency. In fact, TV news is his presidency. He chose his Cabinet members on the basis of their total loyalty to him and how they look and sound on TV. He spends all day watching coverage of himself on TV. And now he’s on the verge of having effective control over a gigantic media monopoly. 

I don’t believe Jon Stewart or John Oliver will be silenced, but their contracts may not be renewed. After all, look at what CBS did to Stephen Colbert, whose show will end in May.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the algorithm on TikTok is adjusted to reduce Trump criticism. 

And a small army of producers and correspondents at CNN are likely to be more careful about what they report. Stories critical of Trump may be axed, as is now occurring at the late, great CBS News. 

How did this happen? Think greed, money, power, and Trump. 

Trump and his media head, Larry Ellison

Trump and the Ellisons take over Warner Bros. Discovery 

When the dark history of this sordid era is written, among the most shameful culprits — who put making humongous amounts of money for themselves above the common good — will be Larry and David Ellison; Shari Redstone, former owner of Paramount; and David Zaslav, the current CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Zaslav is now being lauded by the business community as a genius for selling Warner Bros. Discovery (in turn the owner of CNN, CNN International, and HBO) to the Ellisons’ for $111 billion, more than double its valuation in September. But he’s couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the common good. (Zaslav filed to sell just over $114 million worth of Warner Bros. stock less than a week after Warner Bros. clinched the deal.)

Why would the Ellisons spend billions (and go deep into debt) to buy Warner Bros. Discovery? Wealth and power — along with additional wealth and power that Trump can deliver. 

Larry Ellison is the second-richest person in America. He owns Oracle, which runs much of the digital backbone of the nation’s commerce and government. 

But the Ellisons, per et fils, couldn’t have created their new right-wing media empire without Trump. They needed Trump just as Trump has needed Larry Ellison (who’s been one of Trump’s strongest backers, dating back to the early days of Trump’s presidency).

Even before the Ellisons sweetened their offer for Warner Bros. Discovery and pushed Netflix out of the running, they proclaimed their “confidence in the speed and certainty of regulatory approval” for the deal. Translated: Don’t worry that we’re creating a gigantic media monopoly. Antitrust laws won’t touch us. We’ve got Trump’s Justice Department in the bag. 

Trump and the Ellisons got several Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to join in the deal (making me wonder whether such funding will complicate, or compromise, CBS News’s and CNN’s coverage of Trump’s war in Iran and of the Middle East in general).

Trump takes over CNN

For years Trump has blasted CNN as “fake news” and publicly demanded it be bought by new owners. “It’s imperative that CNN be sold,” Trump said in December, signaling he favored the Ellisons’ takeover proposal.

In December, according to The Wall Street Journal, “David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner Bros. Discovery, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN.”

To be sure, CNN was moving rightward even before the Ellisons got their hands on it.

In 2022, David Zaslav put Chris Licht in charge, who told CNN’s staff he wanted less criticism of Trump and the Republican right — instructing them to stop referring to Trump’s “Big Lie” because he thought the phrase sounded like a Democratic talking point, telling producers to downplay coverage of the first hearing of the congressional committee investigating January 6, and arranging Trump’s infamous CNN town hall, which gave the twice-impeached felonious ex-president a platform to make his comeback. 

CNN’s rightward lurch caused CNN’s primetime show ratings to fall 25 percent and contributed to Licht’s firing after just 13 months. 

Since then, CNN has undergone rounds of cuts under a series of owners seeking to reduce debt. Paramount and the Ellisons (and Trump) will be its fourth corporate parent in under a decade.

Trump takes over CBS

Last summer, as Shari Redstone and other of Paramount’s previous owners sought federal approval to sell Paramount (owner of CBS) to the Ellisons, they sucked up to Trump by settling Trump’s baseless lawsuit against CBS News for $16 million. (He had sued over how “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with former vice president Kamala Harris.)

Late night host Stephen Colbert called the settlement a “big fat bribe,” which it was. 

To win further support from Trump for the sale, they announced the end of Colbert’s show (which, as I said, will finish its run in May). They cited economics, but Colbert’s has been the top-rated late night show on network television. The real reason for the cancellation was obvious: Colbert’s biting satirical criticism of Trump. 

To cinch the deal, David Ellison promised to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at CBS. He hired a right-wing “ombudsman,” Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of a conservative think tank. And he named as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News Bari Weiss, founder of the center-right opinion and news site The Free Press. 

Trump was delighted. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” he said, praising the acquisition and adding that CBS News had “great potential” with Weiss in charge and that he expected it to be “fairer.”

Fairer? Since Weiss took over, almost half of CBS News producers have walked, including legendary veteran Mary Walsh, who began her career under Walter Cronkite. As Walsh explained, “We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.”

Weiss named a bunch of new contributors — many of them retired military or ex-intelligence officials or conservative pundits, including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia (who has subsequently resigned over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein). 

Weiss declared “We love America” a guiding principle and changed the CBS style guide to replace “assigned sex at birth” with “biological sex at birth” when referring to trans people. 

She’s also defanged “60 Minutes.” In December, Weiss axed a “60 Minutes” report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison hours before it was set to air — a move that Sharyn Alfonsi, the long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, claimed was for “political” reasons. (The segment later aired on January 18, drawing over 5 million viewers.)

Weiss replaced “Evening News” anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong.

As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, had Kamala Harris won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.” Exactly. (Moments after that rambling interview, not incidentally, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.”)

How you can help stop this 

All this has happened so suddenly that most Americans still haven’t noticed the emergence of this new pro-Trump media empire — CBS, CNN, HBO, Comedy Central, and TikTok — all under the control of Trump cronies Larry and David Ellison.

Billionaires are flipping media companies like playing cards. They don’t give a fig for the common good, or about the producers, correspondents, journalists, and investigative reporters whose lives are being turned upside-down. To them, it’s all about accumulating more wealth and power. 

But it’s bad for the economy, bad for our democracy, and bad for America. 

The Ellisons’s new mega-media monopoly would never pass muster if America still had antitrust enforcers. Media mergers and acquisitions deserve even stricter scrutiny than normal deals. But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice is as likely to stop this deal as she is to enforce criminal laws against ICE agents. 

So who can stop this? 

State attorneys general. They can go to federal court to enforce federal antitrust laws. They have legal standing and necessary resources to challenge this monstrosity.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, has already made clear he will take it on. “The California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review,” he says. Good luck to him. 

I hope other state attorneys general join in. You can help by contacting your state AGs and suggest they join this lawsuit. Contact information for your state’s AG is here. 

Please do. The last thing America needs is a giant pro-Trump media monopoly. 

Posted in America, anti-trust, civil liberties, democracy, Donald Trump, economy, government, media, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Big Things Trump Doesn’t Want You to Know or Even Think About

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

(Nobody can cut to the chase better and help us understand the important factors in any political event than Robert Reich. What is Trump doing by suddenly attacking Iran? He saw he was in in trouble on several fronts and needed to distract the American people and the corporate media with a swift, unexpected attack on Iran. Nothing works better for changing the narrative than starting a war. Our uncertain economy and watching the Epstein evidence proliferate are not what Trump wants the country to be thinking about. But how long can he delay what is clearly inevitable? –-The TBPR Editor)

By Robert Reich/ robertreich@substack.com/ March 5, 2026

The purpose of Trump’s war in Iran is to deflect our attention, especially from two big things Trump wants banished from the headlines and erased from the our collective consciousness. Which means we need to focus on them like lasers. 

1. The affordability crisis. It’s worsening.

Prices were rising even before Trump and Netanyahu invaded Iran — which was one reason for him plunging America into war. He wanted to remove “affordability” from the news (he called it a “Democratic scam”) . 

But Trump’s war is causing prices to rise even faster. 

About 20 percent of world oil and gas production passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now essentially closed to shipping. This means higher prices at the pump. As of this morning, oil prices were approximately $15 to $16 a barrel higher than they were in mid-February, which will add roughly 40 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline. If the war continues for a month or more, oil (and gas) prices could go much higher. 

The war is also causing food prices — which were also high before the war — to rise even faster. That’s because roughly a quarter to a third of the global trade in ammonia and nitrogen — the critical raw materials for making fertilizer — must also pass through the strait. Without fertilizer, crop yields fall. 

Fertilizer prices are already rising, as they did in early 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Likewise, anticipated lower crop yields are already raising the prices of household staples such as bread, pasta and potatoes to rise, and making animal feed more costly.

Adding to these are larger risks to the nation’s financial stability created by a regional war whose aim continues to be vague. The private credit market poses one vulnerability; the AI bubble, another. The result is uncertainty that causes lenders to demand a higher premium to cover extra risks. 

Already, fears of more serious inflation are driving up interest rates on ten-year Treasury bonds. I expect rates on mortgages and car loans to rise in tandem. 

Oy. 

2. Epstein

The other thing Trump wanted to deflect our attention from is the Epstein files. But it won’t go away, either. 

After the Wall Street Journal earlier this week identified more than 40,000 files that appeared to be missing from documents posted to the Justice Department’s website, a Justice Department spokeswoman today admitted that “47,635 files were offline for further review” and “should be ready for re-production by the end of the week.”

Further review? Sure looks like a cover-up. The withheld files include F.B.I. notes on a series of interviews a woman gave to agents in 2019 in which she alleged sexual misconduct by both Trump and Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s.

By law, the Justice Department was required to release the Epstein files in full by December 19, 2025. (The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), which Trump signed into law in November, required that all the documents be made public within 30 days, with some limited exceptions.) So far, only about half the files have been released, and many are heavily redacted.

Even House Republicans are becoming upset about this, presumably because the Republican base wants it cleared up. “AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not,” House Republican Nancy Mace wrote on X. She continued: 

“The Epstein case is one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. His global sex trafficking network is larger than what is being revealed. Three million documents have been released, and we still don’t have the full truth. Videos are missing. Audio is missing. Logs are missing. There are millions more documents out there. We want to know why the DOJ is more focused on shielding the powerful than delivering justice.”

Fighting words, and from a Republican. Yesterday, by a vote of 24 to 19, the House Oversight Committee agreed to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the release of the Epstein files. Five Republicans voted in favor, including Mace, who put the motion forward, along with Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. 

After the vote, Mace told reporters: 

“I know that Bondi has testified before the Judiciary Committee, but she’s not testified before me or the Oversight Committee. I need to get to the bottom of this for other survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. I have a lot more questions, and I don’t expect to be talking about the stock market [which she did when she testified before the Judiciary Committee] so she better not bring those notes when she comes to the Oversight Committee.”

Mace said the subpoena is for closed-door testimony with video that will be released to the public afterward. 

**

One more thing, which Trump probably doesn’t want us to pay much attention to, either. 

This afternoon, he finally fired Kristi Noem. What put him over the brink was not the murder of two Americans by Noem’s immigration agents, or ICE’s brutality, or the unconstitutionality of arresting and detaining people without due process. No, what really got him riled up (according to several sources) was Noem’s combative hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which she alleged that Trump had signed off on a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign featuring her appearing on horseback against the background of Mt. Rushmore. 

If there’s one thing Trump can’t stand, it’s someone else’s self-promotion. Besides, he wants his face on Mt. Rushmore. 

Posted in economy, foreign policy, politics, war, government, Iran, Energy, Middle East, Donald Trump, America | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Neither Do Much For Me

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Arlen Grossman
Posted in America, civil liberties, democracy, Donald Trump, extremism, government, Iran, philosophy, politics, religion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Operation Epstein Fury: Is This About National Security or Political Survival?

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Madison and the Founders of his generation had it right: what Trump is doing violates both the Constitution and the foundational norms of democracy…

(We can talk about the millions of reasons President Trump had to attack Iran, but it all really boils down to this: Trump realized he was about to be exposed as a predator/child sex criminal and on the verge of losing his job as president. The reason for this Iran invasion was what so many were speculating prior to the attack: Invading Iran would distract from his soon-to-be-exposed crimes on Epstein’s island. That strategy is working well for Trump and his people.

(Right now the politicians and political pundits are trying to figure out why the Trump administration attacked Iran at this time. Never mind that nobody in Washington, President Trump included, can come up with a coherent reason why this war was necessary now. So far Trump’s strategy is working brilliantly–the evidence tying him to the Epstein sex crimes has been forgotten. Politicians and the corporate media are doing what they do best–distracting the American people from the real crimes being done to them. Thom Hartmann understands well.–The TBPR Editor)

By Thom Hartmann/ HartmannReport.com/ March 2, 2026

Operation Epstein Fury — with a bonus to help Bibi get re-elected so he doesn’t have to face charges for his criminal behavior — is rolling on as Trump ignores the constitutional requirement that only Congress can declare war. 

He’s also violating the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that dictates the president, if he reacts to an actual attack on America like Pearl Harbor, must notify Congress within 48 hours and have authorization within 60 days. In this case there was no actual or even imminent attack against America.

To further confuse things, Trump is throwing the Iranian protestors under the bus by saying that he’s willing to talk with the Iranian regime now that Kahmenei is dead, much like he crapped on pro-democracy voters and protestors in Venezuela when he kept that repressive regime intact after illegally removing Maduro and promising democracy.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/operation-epstein-fury-is-this-about-2fb?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

This conflict is also now spreading. Kahmenei was to many Shia Muslims around the world something akin to what the Pope is to Catholics (there’s no equivalent among the Sunni Muslims). Imagine the Catholic world’s fury if a country had assassinated Pope Leo XIV: we’re now seeing Shia protests and outrage from Bangladesh to Pakistan to Lebanon. 

And here at home Trump is musing about using Iranian interference in our 2020 election as an excuse to issue an emergency executive order to seize control of the upcoming November midterm election. 

Which is particularly ironic, given that the well-documented Iranian intervention that year was designed to help get Trump reelected (after all, he’d just torn up the JCPOA nuclear deal) and avoid a Biden administration from coming into power.

Four Americans are dead and five in critical condition because of Iranian retaliatory strikes, as are civilians in several other US-aligned countries in the region. Along with around 200 young people in Iran after we bombed a girl’s school and a gymnasium. 

And it’s early days. As Winston Churchill famously said in 1936 about war: 

“Once the signal is given, no one can predict how far events will go.”

America’s Founders and the Framers of our Constitution not only would have agreed with Churchill, but saw a president seizing war powers from Congress as an existential threat to the republic. On April 20, 1795, James Madison, who had just helped shepherd through the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and would become President of the United States in the following decade, wrote:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

Reflecting on the ability of a president to use war as an excuse to become a virtual dictator, Madison continued his letter:

“In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive [President] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war…and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both.

“No nation,” our fourth President and the Father of the Constitution concluded, “could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Since Madison’s warning, “continual warfare” has been used both in fiction and in the real world. In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the way a seemingly democratic president kept his nation in a continual state of repression was by having a continuous war.

The lesson wasn’t lost on Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, who both extended the Vietnam war so it coincidentally ran over election cycles, knowing that a wartime President’s party is more likely to be reelected and has more power than a President in peacetime.

And, as George W. Bush told his biographer in 1999:

“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as commander in chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Every Republican president since Reagan has had his own “little war.” Now it’s Trump’s turn, after all the times over the years he warned that if Obama was ever in trouble he’d start a war with Iran to distract us:

“In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” (2011)
“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective…” (2011)
“@BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election.” (2012)
“Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” (2012)
“I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!” (2013)
“Remember what I said about @BarackObama attacking Iran before the election…” (2012)

Given that Baron, Don Jr, and Eric Trump all apparently suffer from hereditary bonespurs and no Trump has ever served as a “loser” or “sucker” in our military (and his grandfather came to America as a German draft-dodger), it’s unlikely this war will mean anything other than profit-making opportunities for the Trump children.

But it compounds his constant ignoring of constitutional limits on presidential power ranging from gutting federal agencies without authorization to having ICE routinely ignore court orders, flagrantly violate the Fourth Amendment, and daily lie to the American people.

Nobody invested in peace or democracy is mourning the death of the Iranian dictator or the possible unraveling of its theocracy. But must we do it in a way that breaks both US and international law?

Trump apparently thinks so; not only will it distract from the news reports that he raped at least one and maybe more 13-year-olds and his naked corruption and bribe-taking but it also carves another “screwed Congress” notch in his belt.

There was no attack on America, as required by the War Powers Resolution. There wasn’t even a serious possibility of an attack on America. 

Madison and the Founders of his generation had it right: this is a naked crime by Trump and Hegseth against our Constitution and our laws and requires a strong congressional response such as impeachment.

Posted in America, Announcements, Donald Trump, foreign policy, Gaza, government, history, Iran, Israel, military, politics, Republican Party, revolution, U.S. Constitution, war | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Two Leaders–Trump and Netanyahu–With Too Much Undeserved Power

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Donald Trump, America’s President, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, have a lot in common. They both want unfettered power. and both remain in control and out of jail by consolidating executive power and making sure they are both statutorily immune from prosecution while in power. While each enjoys dictatorial rule, their main difference is that Bibi is a lot smarter than Trump and can convince the American president to willingly do his bidding. Meanwhile Tom Friedman tells us that American and Israeli citizens can only helplessly watch as the actions of these two leaders are mostly condemned by the rest of the world and give antisemites more reason and opportunity to spread their hate.—TBPR Editor

Let’s stop beating around the bush: Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is spitting in America’s face and telling us it’s raining. It’s not raining. Bibi is playing both President Trump and American Jews for fools. And if the U.S. lets him get away with it, we are fools.

While keeping Trump focused on the Iranian missile and nuclear threat — which, though reduced, is still very real and will have to be dealt with diplomatically or militarily — Bibi is fundamentally threatening broader U.S. interests in the Middle East, not to mention the security of Jews all over the world. In what way? I cannot put it any more succinctly than Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, did.

“A violent and criminal effort is underway to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank,” he wrote in an essay in Haaretz this month. “Gangs of armed settlers persecute, harm, wound and even kill Palestinians living there. The rampages include burning olive groves, houses and cars; breaking into homes; and physically assaulting people.” He continued: “The rioters, the Jewish terrorists, storm Palestinians with hate and violence with one objective: to force them to flee from their homes. All this is done in the hopes that the land will then be prepared for Jewish settlement, en route to realizing the dream of annexing all the territories.”

Israel’s accelerating attempts toward annexation of the West Bank and to permanently remain in Gaza — and deny Palestinians political rights in both areas — are as morally reckless and demographically insane as would be the U.S. annexing Mexico.

If it were just Israelis who were going to be hurt by the crazy fantasy that some seven million Israeli Jews can control about seven million Palestinian Arabs in perpetuity, I might be tempted to say that if Israel’s leaders want to commit national suicide, I can’t stop them.

But the effects will not be confined to Israel. I believe that this messianically driven endeavor will make today’s Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa and will have seriously detrimental implications for both American interests and the interests and security of Jews all over the world.

If Netanyahu’s government stays on this course, it will rip apart Jewish institutions everywhere as members of the Jewish diaspora are forced to decide whether to stand with or against an apartheidlike Israel. It will also accelerate the trend begun by Israel’s devastation of Gaza wherein growing numbers of young Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are turning against Israel and, at the fringes, against Jews in general.

Jewish parents around the globe will soon be in a position they never dreamed of: watching their children and grandchildren learn what it’s like to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state.

A poll by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, conducted by YouGov in November, found that 51 percent of Republican voters under age 45 said they preferred to support a candidate in the 2028 presidential primary who favored reducing taxpayer-funded weapon transfers to Israel. Only 27 percent favored a candidate who would increase or maintain weapon supplies. Democratic candidates today who do not describe Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide face real headwinds with young progressive voters.

At the Munich Security Conference last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked if she thought “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel.” She answered: “I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza.”

As I said when I began, Netanyahu has played Trump for a sucker, as well as the pro-Israel lobby led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and many other so-called American Jewish leaders. He has gotten them to focus on Iran and ignore the fact that everything he is doing in Gaza, in the West Bank and inside Israel will strain ties between the U.S. and its major Middle East allies, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar.

Yes, Iran remains a reduced but very real nuclear threat after Israeli and U.S. airstrikes hit its nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile facilities in June. It has already largely rebuilt its stock of ballistic missiles that could do real physical damage to Israel if war resumes. I take that very seriously.

But focusing exclusively on the external threat from Iran ignores the internal threat Netanyahu’s government poses to Israel and its standing as a rule-of-law democracy and unified society. Netanyahu has been engaged in a three-year effort, even during the war in Gaza, to carry out a judicial coup that would all but eliminate the separation of powers in Israel — one that enables its Supreme Court to check the excesses of the governing political party. Is Iran responsible for that? No.

Has Iran been engaged in a relentless effort to purge or disempower Israel’s courageous, independent attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara? No, but Bibi has. That attorney general, backed by the Supreme Court, is the only thing standing in the way of further assaults on a rules-based government: the dismissal of Netanyahu’s corruption trial, as well as Bibi’s efforts to politicize civil service appointments and a wholesale exemption from military service for the ultra-Orthodox Jews who keep him in power.

Has Iran blocked establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the incredible intelligence and leadership failure before Hamas’s murderous Oct. 7 invasion? No, but Bibi has. That invasion not only happened on Netanyahu’s watch but also was clearly caused in part by his efforts to prove to the world that Israel could have peace with the Arab states without making peace with the Palestinians.

Hamas grew in strength thanks to Netanyahu’s long efforts to prop up Hamas with Qatari money so the Palestinian leadership would always be divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That way Bibi could tell every U.S. president that he was so sorry that he had no unified Palestinian peace partner to negotiate with.

Did Iran nominate inexperienced Bibi cronies to run Israel’s most important security organizations — the Shin Bet and Mossad? No, Bibi did.

What prompted Trump to publicly demand that the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, pardon Netanyahu — even before a verdict — for the corruption charges he has been indicted on? It would be a terrible blow to the rule of law in Israel. It certainly was not Iran.

And here is what is truly crazy. Israel today has never been more militarily feared and technologically admired by its Arab neighbors, because of the blows that it dealt Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. If Netanyahu engaged in negotiations for a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority — on any reasonable terms — it would pave the way for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

The whole neighborhood, and the whole Muslim world beyond it, would open up to Israel; Iran would be totally isolated. Israeli technology and Arab energy would create an amazing synergy for the age of A.I.

That would be a huge boon to U.S. interests. While some complications would surely persist, the Middle East would essentially be making peace under an American umbrella. And the reduction in tensions between Israel and the Arab world would allow the Trump administration to do what the past several U.S. administrations have craved: reduce its military presence in the region and shift its focus to counterbalancing China in Asia. Unfortunately, Bibi has other priorities.

The annexationist ambitions of the Netanyahu cabinet directly clash with Trump’s 20-point plan, which imagines a two-state solution one day. The “Board of Peace,” Trump created to oversee that plan, is holding its inaugural meeting in Washington on Thursday, but Netanyahu is skipping it.

Bibi’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday that after elections this fall, he would in his next term be “encouraging the migration” of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, all of America’s key Arab allies and Turkey, which are central to Trump’s Gaza cease-fire deal, got together on a statement strongly condemning Israel’s decision to ⁠designate land in the occupied West Bank as Israeli state land.

When Israel is engaged in de facto annexation, with what human rights groups describe as ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, it is turning itself into a major contributor to permanent conflict in the region. None of that is in America’s interest, but it is greatly appreciated by Iran.

Tehran’s Islamo-fascist rulers pose a very real threat to Israel. They lead a terrible regime whose downfall would be a blessing to its people and the region. But please — please — spare me the nonsense that Iran is the only threat to Israel today.

Iran is not the greatest threat to Israel as a democracy governed by the rule of law. It is not the greatest threat to U.S.-Israeli relations. It is not the greatest threat to the unity and security of Jews around the world. It is not the reason so many talented Israeli technologists, engineers and doctors are moving away. And it is not the biggest reason Israel is becoming an apartheid state by not only refusing to try anymore to create a separate Palestinian state but also by working instead to make that impossible.

That title goes to the government of messianic zealots, Arab-hating nationalists and anti-modern ultra-Orthodox Israelis put together by Benjamin Netanyahu to keep himself in power.

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Epstein Files Are Missing Records About Woman Who Made Claim Against Trump

Posted on February 26, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Documents released by the Justice Department briefly mention a woman’s unverified accusation that Donald J. Trump assaulted her in the 1980s, when she was a minor. But several memos related to her account are not in the files.

Mike Baker
Michael Gold

By Mike Baker and Michael Gold / New York Times/ Feb. 25, 2026

At this point we have to ask ourselves this question: Is Donald Trump the most corrupt individual in American history? The answer is obvious. Based on so the number of crimes committed by one individual, negatively affecting the public in the most ways, and setting democracy back for decades, the answer is obvious: Donald J. Trump. –-TBPR Editor

The vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department from its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump, according to a review by The New York Times.

The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor.

The existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released. According to that index, the F.B.I. conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one. But only one of the summaries, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department. The other three are missing.

The public files also do not include the underlying interview notes, which the index also indicates are part of the file. The Justice Department released similar interview notes in connection to F.B.I. interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.

It is unclear why the materials are missing. The Justice Department said in a statement to The Times on Monday that “the only materials that have been withheld were either privileged or duplicates.” In a new statement on Tuesday, the department also noted that documents could have been withheld because of “an ongoing federal investigation.” Officials did not directly address why the memos related to the woman’s claim were not released.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said in a new statement that it was reviewing which documents were released in connection to the index. The department said it would publish any documents “found to have been improperly tagged in the review process” that are legally required to be made public.

The woman’s description of being assaulted by Mr. Trump in the 1980s is among a number of uncorroborated accusations against well-known men, including the president, that are contained in the millions of documents released by the Justice Department.

When the files were made public late last month, officials described the trove as including all material sent by the public to the F.B.I. “Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the F.B.I. right before the 2020 election,” the department said in a statement at the time, calling such claims “unfounded and false.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. In a statement on Tuesday, a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said Mr. Trump had “been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”

A lawyer who previously represented the woman in a lawsuit against Mr. Epstein’s estate declined to comment.

The missing records deepen questions about how the Justice Department has handled the release of the Epstein files, which was mandated by a law signed by Mr. Trump last year after bipartisan congressional pressure.

Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, addressing reporters after the Justice Department released more Epstein files last month.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Under the law, the Justice Department can redact material that could be used to identify Mr. Epstein’s victims, depicted violence or child sexual abuse, or would hurt a continuing federal investigation. But the law expressly prohibited federal officials from withholding or redacting materials “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity” to public figures.

Some lawmakers and survivors of Mr. Epstein’s abuse have strongly condemned the department for how it handled redactions, noting that details identifying some victims were left exposed and nude photographs of young women were included in the public release, while material related to claims of abuse by other men had been heavily redacted.

The woman who made the accusation about Mr. Trump came forward in July 2019, days after federal investigators arrested Mr. Epstein on sex-trafficking charges, according to records in the public files of tips the F.B.I. received during that period. She claimed that she had been repeatedly assaulted by Mr. Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s, according to a summary of an F.B.I. interview with her on July 24, 2019.

The F.B.I. did three subsequent interviews to assess her account in August and October 2019 and made a summary of each interview, according to the index of records compiled in the case. But the memos describing those three interviews were not publicly released.

The public files do contain a 2025 description of her account, as well as other accusations against prominent men contained in the documents. In that 2025 memo, federal officials wrote that the woman had said that Mr. Epstein introduced her to Mr. Trump, and that she claimed Mr. Trump had assaulted her in a violent and lurid encounter. The documents say the alleged incident would have occurred in the mid-1980s when she was 13 to 15 years old, but they do not include any assessment by the F.B.I. about the credibility of her accusation.

The Times’s examination of a set of serial numbers on the individual pages in the public files suggests that more than 50 pages of investigative materials related to her claims are not in the publicly available files. The missing materials were reported earlier by the journalist Roger Sollenberger on Substack and by NPR.

Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that when he reviewed unredacted versions of the Epstein files at the Justice Department on Monday, interview summaries related to the woman’s claim were also missing from that trove.

“Documents that are listed, which should be included, which are referenced in other documents, are not in the files,” Mr. Garcia said. He added that the Justice Department had also not provided them to the Oversight Committee, which issued a subpoena last year for all of the Justice Department’s investigative material regarding Mr. Epstein.

Representative Robert Garcia of California speaking with his hand raised from behind a lectern outside the Capitol.
Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that interview summaries related to the woman’s claim were also missing from a trove of unredacted files he reviewed on Monday.Credit…Heather Diehl/Getty Images

Mr. Garcia said the Justice Department had not provided a proper explanation for why the materials were missing. Democrats plan to open a separate investigation into why the documents are not available.

In the sole summary of the F.B.I. interview that was released, the woman told investigators that she did not know Mr. Epstein’s full identity until 2019, when a friend sent her a photograph of Mr. Epstein. She said she then recognized the person who she said had raped her.

The woman told the agents she still had the photo on her phone, and they noted that it was a widely distributed photo of Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump, according to the document. She gave the agents permission to take a photograph of the image but asked them to crop out Mr. Trump. When asked why, her lawyer interjected that the woman “was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation,” according to the F.B.I. memo.

It is unclear exactly what F.B.I. agents learned about her claims related to Mr. Trump in their three subsequent interviews.

The woman spent most of the interview on July 24, 2019, describing in detail what she said were repeated violent assaults by Mr. Epstein that she had endured, as reported earlier by The Post and Courier. She said that as a teenager in South Carolina, she was asked to babysit at a house on Hilton Head Island. But after she arrived, there were no children to babysit, and only a man she came to know as Jeff who she said plied her with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. She described him raping her on multiple occasions.

The woman joined a lawsuit later in 2019 against Mr. Epstein’s estate. She subsequently dropped her claim. Court records do not indicate if she received any financial settlement. A court record from 2021 said she was separately deemed ineligible for compensation from a fund set up for Epstein victims, but it did not specify why.

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How About Healthcare For Americans?

Posted on February 23, 2026 by Arlen Grossman
Greenland PM says thanks but no thanks to Trump hospital ship offer

Here is one more example of Donald Trump’s record-breaking hypocrisy. President Trump, who has no clue how to offer healthcare to millions of Americans, offers healthcare to Greenland, a country that already offers free healthcare to its citizens. Mind-boggling! — TBPR Editor

By Max Rego/ The Hill/ February 23, 2026

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen is turning down an offer from President Trump, who has openly sought to acquire the island from Denmark, to send a Navy hospital ship to his country.B

“It’s going to be a no thank you from here,” Nielsen wrote on Facebook. “President Trump’s idea to send an American hospital ship here to Greenland is noted. But we have a public health system where treatment is free for citizens. It’s a deliberate choice. And a basic part of our society. It’s not like that in the United States, where it costs money to go to the doctor.”

“We are always open to dialogue and collaboration. Also with the U.S. But talk to us now instead of just coming up with more or less random outbursts on social media. Dialogue and cooperation require respest that decisions about our country are made at home.”

On Saturday night, Trump posted a photo to his Truth Social platform of the USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed hospital vessel commissioned in 1986. While the Mercy is typically docked on Naval Base San Diego, Calif., it has been in Mobile, Ala., since August, according to Marine Traffic. 

“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” the president wrote. “It’s on the way!!!”

Landry, who addition to his duties as Louisiana governor is serving as Trump’s envoy to Greenland, criticized Nielsen for turning down the offer Sunday. The Navy referred The Hill to the Pentagon regarding whether the Mercy will still head to Greenland.

“Shame on Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen! President @realDonaldTrump and America care,” Landry wrote on social platform X. “After speaking to many Greenlanders about the day to day problems they face, one issue stood out—healthcare.

“Many villages and small towns lack basic services that Americans often take for granted. Small settlements are without permanent doctors, diagnostic tools, or specialist care — forcing residents to travel great distances for vital treatments that should be available at home.”

Last month, Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced a framework agreement on Greenland, after the president repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring the semi-sovereign Danish territory. Details of the agreement, which gives the U.S. preferential access to Greenland’s minerals, remain sparse over a month later.

“A healthy Greenland is vital for America’s national security,” Landry continued. “America is committed to defending Greenland, and that begins by ensuring its people are defended against basic illnesses and ailments. These missions matter because health is inseparable from security. America’s commitment to defending Greenland must begin with ensuring its people are healthy.”

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Why the hell is Trump threatening war with Iran again?

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

His real goal is regime change, which will get us bogged down there for years. 

There is one area that many voters felt Donald Trump was superior to Democratic Party presidential candidates in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. Trump appeared to be adverse to war and regime change. He seemed less hawkish compared to many Democrats. Many of his votes were due to the perception of voters that Trump would more likely avoid foreign wars and stick to America First policies. But after seeing what happened in Venezuela a few weeks ago, it appears his views have changed. He arranged a large military presence there and then removed its leader, Nicholás Maduro. Flash forward to a similar situation with another troubled nation, Iran. Trump may decide to invade them like he did in Venezuela. In a more dangerous and unstable area in the Middle East, the consequences would probably be more uncertain and dangerous. What is on Trump’s addled mind?Robert Reich explains why we need to worry…..TBPR Editor

By Robert Reich/ robertreich.substack.com/ February 18, 2026

America is on the brink of a full-scale war with Iran — but no one is willing to say exactly why, including the occupant of the Oval Office. 

But there are clues. 

The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is en route from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East. It should arrive there within days. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and three guided-missile destroyers are already there. 

As the world’s largest armada assembles near Iran, a second round of talks between the U.S. and Iran has just concluded, apparently without getting anywhere. Meanwhile, Tehran is conducting military drills in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial choke point for the world’s oil.

Americans have never had exceedingly long attention spans, but the last year of Trump “flooding the zone” has further shortened them. To refresh memories: 

In late June, Trump claimed that U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites had been “a spectacular military success” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” He told reporters that “Iran’s not going to have a nuclear weapon. I think it’s the last thing on their mind right now.”

Nearly six months later, in early January, when Iranians took to the streets, Trump warned that if Iran threatened protesters’ lives, the U.S. would “come to their rescue.” He said, “We are locked and loaded, and ready to go.” 

As the reported death toll in the protests soared into the hundreds, Trump urged the protesters to take over Iranian institutions and log the names of their “killers and abusers.” “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” he posted in all caps. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!.”

Yet despite reports that as many as 3,428 Iranians had been killed and that more executions were imminent, no help was on its way. Many Iranians said they felt betrayed and confused by Trump’s failure to act.

By the fourth week of January, Trump once again talked about Iran, saying, “We have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case.” 

In case of what? By then the death toll in Iran was said to be more than 5,000 (some reports had it many times higher), but Trump no longer even mentioned Iran’s brutal crackdown. 

On January 28, with U.S. ships assembling in the Middle East, Trump said of the armada, “like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.” 

What exactly was this “mission?” And why did Trump compare it to the mission in Venezuela? It was a clue. 

Last week, Trump warned that the U.S. would attack Iran unless it made a “deal” and has “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS.” 

But the Trump regime’s apparent objectives have shifted once again.

Yesterday — after a second round of talks between Iran and the United States concluded in Geneva without any breakthrough, and Iran insisted that the talks be strictly limited to its nuclear program — U.S. officials said they’re pushing to curb all of Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support of militias across the region.

In an interview with Fox News yesterday, JD Vance said the Iranians aren’t acknowledging some “red lines” that Trump has set, but Vance didn’t say what those red lines were. 

I wouldn’t be as worried if we had a thoughtful person in the Oval Office, a competent secretary of defense, and a secretary of state who seemed to be in charge. 

But we don’t have any of them. 

The United States is being represented in the talks by “Special Envoy” Steve Witkoff (whose son is the chief executive of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, nearly half of which was purchased last year for $500 million by an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates). And by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (who’s been making private deals with the Saudis and who raised several billion dollars before Trump’s second term from overseas investors including sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates). 

No one from the State Department. Nobody from the National Security Council. No one who knows much of anything about Iran. 

So what’s the real goal?

On Friday, in a little-noticed remark, Trump said “the best thing that could happen” in Iran would be regime change, noting “there are people” who could take over from Iran’s Islamic ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Bingo. 

Trump promised his MAGA base that he wouldn’t be involved in seeking regime changes abroad. But that was before he abducted Venezuela’s Nicholás Maduro and replaced him with Maduro’s vice president. 

Yet regime change in Iran would be far, far more difficult to pull off than regime change in Venezuela. The Middle East has demonstrated that it can swallow up America, even with the largest fighting force in the world. Anyone remember Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and … Iran? 

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Posted on February 17, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

https://www.playpodcast.net/podcast/countdown-with-keith-olbermann/#e4302-1dGz2TrHNfkF5JZnGgY6Wt

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The Tragic end of CBS News

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Arlen Grossman

Another trusted source of information bites the dust under Trump

By Robert Reich/ robertreich.substack.com/ February 12, 2026

I just happened to see that the noted polling company Gallup, founded by George Gallup in 1935, made an important policy change this month. Gallup, after 88 years, will no longer measure presidential approval, a decision it said “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.” However they say it, I don’t buy it. Like every other media-related firm, they feel the need to please our insecure commander-in-chief. How does the president feel when he sees Gallup’s last poll of 2025, which found 36% of Americans approving of Trump with 59% disapproving. My best guess is that President Trump will be pleased with Gallup’s decision. –TBPR Editor

Producer Alicia Hastey departed CBS News Wednesday, saying the kind of work she came to do was “increasingly becoming impossible,” as stories were now evaluated “not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of idealogical expectations.” 

Whose ideological expectations was Hastey referring to? Would it be impertinent for me to suggest it’s the sociopath in the Oval Office? 

Hastey’s criticism came a little over two weeks after Bari Weiss, the anti-“woke” opinion journalist who became editor-in-chief CBS’s News, unveiled her  “21st century” vision at a town hall meeting. Weiss told producers and staff they were free to leave if they didn’t like it. 

Since then, at least six out of CBS Evening News’s twenty producers have accepted buyouts.

At that town hall meeting Weiss also named a bunch of new contributors — including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia. In the latest tranche of Epstein Files, Attia appears over 1,700 times, including an email in which he tells Epstein that “p—y is, indeed, low carb.” 

In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared that “We love America” should be a guiding principle for the relaunch of the CBS Evening News.

Meanwhile, Weiss has replaced Evening News anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — who was best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong. 

In one of his first broadcasts, Dokoupil accepted without question Israel’s justification for violating the terms of the ceasefire when it killed three journalists in Gaza, reporting only that “Israel said it was targeting a group operating a drone affiliated with Hamas.” 

Weiss faced blowback in December when she shelved a “60 Minutes” report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, hours before it was set to air. 

Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, had accused CBS News of pulling it for “political” reasons. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a note to the CBS News Team. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

The segment later aired on Jan. 18, drawing in over 5 million viewers.

The story CBS posted about Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis reported that “The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.”

No identifiable source was given for CBS’s assertion of “internal bleeding.” A CBS News staffer reported “huge internal concern” that the source was an anonymous leak by the Trump administration meant for an outlet they could trust to run it, no questions asked.

Weiss doesn’t exactly report to Donald Trump, of course. Trump runs CBS News the way he runs Venezuela — with a widely-understood threat that he’ll wreak havoc if it doesn’t do what he wants. 

As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, if Kamala Harris had won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.”

Perhaps CBS News didn’t edit Dokoupil’s rambling interview with Trump because, moments after it ended, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “‘if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.’”

You see the way Trump now controls CBS News? Dokoupil is Bari Weiss’s newly-minted anchor. Bari Weiss is David Ellison’s newly-minted head of CBS News. David Ellison is his father’s (Larry Ellison) newly-minted head of Paramount, which is the new owner of CBS. Larry Ellison is a pal of Trump’s, who contributes to Trump’s super PAC. And Trump? He has the power to take the prized Warner Bros Discovery out of the clutches of Netflix and deliver it to Ellison. 

Among David Ellison’s first moves at CBS was to gut DEI policies, appoint right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and appoint Weiss. 

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had responsibilities to the American public that transcended making money for CBS’s investors. 

America can survive without a “60 Minutes” it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of the Washington Post — which Jeff Bezos has censored, and whose newsroom he just gutted. 

But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.

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