NEWS YOU CAN USE?

UNEXPECTEDLY:

DEVELOPING: I'm told there are texts/emails indicating Hillary Clinton campaign aides directly coordinated with the Obama White House, NSC, State Dept and Intelligence Community officials in efforts to dig up dirt tying Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin in July 2016 …developing…

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) July 20, 2025

It won’t become a reality, but still, it’s fun to dig this 2016 Photoshop that accompanied a VDH article headlined “A Nation of Laws—Sort Of” out of the archives:

BUILD BACK BRANDON:

800,000 Biden jobs were fake.

I'm old enough to remember CNN lecturing Americans for being too dumb to appreciate the amazing Biden economy ✌️ https://t.co/wa7KBdZjbr

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) July 20, 2025

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE:

And all the other competitors for Whitest Protest in the History of Mankind packed up and went home knowing there was no hope https://t.co/OeV6rhJP3P

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 20, 2025

(Classical reference in headline.)

THIS IS CNN:

Remember, the communist is more robot than human. They plug into the hive mind and get a programming update with all the words they’re supposed to use. Then they march forward like army ants deploying those words. “Racist” has been part of their programming for a long time. https://t.co/gk2fArqGHV

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) July 20, 2025

BEN SHAPIRO: Is Fascism Right Wing?

FOR ALL MANKIND:

July 20, 1969. “Contact light, engine stop.” The Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle touched down at Tranquility Base on the Moon.
A few hours later, Neil Armstrong and I stepped foot on the Moon, with Michael Collins orbiting close-by.
An achievement resulting from years of… pic.twitter.com/VN4qCoHx0K

— Dr. Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) July 20, 2025

FASTER, PLEASE:

Trump's bringing it back.

Did you see his Executive Order from earlier this year?

They've literally been handcuffing the airline industry to ancient and outdated airframes & engines so some people could continue to rake in the big $$$.

There were prohibitions in place… pic.twitter.com/UfoglsLAP0

— Brian Cates – Political Columnist & Pundit (@drawandstrike) July 20, 2025

BANE SMILES: Mamdani Is the Mayor New York Democrats Deserve.

That people get the government they deserve is a cruel adage, too cruel if you live in dark places where a small minority with guns terrorizes an unarmed population—see “Cuba, socialist state of.” But in a democracy, the maxim holds firmly.

Which means that if the citizens of New York City vote in Zohran Mamdani as their mayor come November, and things go badly, then Gotham really can’t ask for our sympathy. That Democrats voted him as their candidate in the primary on June 24 is one thing, but if voters of all parties ratify that decision on Election Day, that’s another.

Then it’s Pottery Barn rules: If you break it, you own it. Sure, it’s only natural to spare an initial thought for our compatriots from the Bronx to Staten Island if things go south, but after that, sit back and get the popcorn. I plan to do so wearing my threadbare Yankee cap.

As a great New Yorker was quoted as saying, “The people have spoken. And now they must be punished.” Or to put it another way:

DAVID MARCUS: Stephen Colbert’s character is the latest never-Trump Republican to fall.

Just as is the case with Never Trump pundits, Colbert’s Never Trump late night TV host is not only tired now, but utterly pointless and irrelevant. The Republican that Colbert has spent his career pretending to be, simply doesn’t exist anymore.

As news of Colbert’s cancellation spread, we saw from the usual suspects on the Left dire warnings about government censorship and authoritarianism. It’s all a flaming bag of nonsense.

If, as these wackos presume, CBS buckled to Trump to get their parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance past the administration even though Colbert is the biggest star in late night, then surely a rival network would scoop him up. That’s how value in entertainment works.

But the problem for Colbert is that the entire basis of his character, and frankly, career, has disintegrated under his feet as it has for so many who made their entire lives about defeating Donald Trump.

Colbert’s caricature of a mid-level manager white guy who just wants low taxes and his kids not to be gay and doesn’t read books depicts nobody in reality. It is a figment of elite, urban, progressive fearmongers.

It was another famous late-night host named Johnny Carson who once turned the tables on legendary insult comedian Don Rickles, by quipping, “Don is a great comedian, I love his joke.”

Sadly, though Carson was kidding, this really is the fate that Colbert suffered. He only had one joke, and that joke isn’t funny anymore.

So, RIP to the “Late Show” and to Never Trump, two things that time and fortune have passed by, under the watchful eye of Donald J. Trump.

Colbert wasn’t exactly bringing in hip young viewers to CBS:

The average age of Colbert’s viewers is two years older than Johnny Carson was when he retired from the Tonight Show in 1992 at age 66.

UPDATE: The unwatchably awful Stephen Colbert interview that proves why he was doomed.

In a June 2024 profile with Entertainment Weekly, Colbert pulled out a photo not of late-night legends Johnny Carson or David Letterman but famed news anchor Walter Cronkite.

‘This is my reminder,’ Colbert intoned, ‘that Walter Cronkite started off as a morning anchor who had a puppet lion, so let’s not hear about the dignity of CBS News. F**k you.’*

The arrogance. The hubris. Colbert was paid a reported $15 million a year, yet insulted his bosses in print and on his show — and thought he was too important to face consequences!

Instead, of course, he and his cohort blame Trump — who, frankly, has bigger problems to deal with than this late-night hack.

‘Everyone knows what happened,’ a Colbert show source told the Daily Mail. ‘He came out against Trump and now he’s gone.’

Or maybe he just bleeds $40 million annually and can’t book any guests bigger than Rep. Adam Schiff, who told President Trump to ‘piss off’ on Thursday night’s show.

It’s similarly grim for the apolitical Jimmy Fallon, cut down from five to four nights a week at NBC; Seth Meyers, who had to fire his band after budget cuts; and
Jimmy Kimmel, whose viewing figures lag some 600,000 behind Colbert.

‘F**k CBS,’ said Kimmel this week.

How brave. How impactful. Listen, Kimmel — your days are numbered, too.

Ultra-liberal Jon Stewart, who returned to his desk at The Daily Show after all manner of other projects failed to launch, on whether his own show will last much longer: ‘I honestly don’t know. They may sell the whole f**king place for parts.’

These guys just refuse to get the memo. They still cling to the sinking ship of liberal legacy media and linear TV, which viewers are rejecting in droves.

* That’s such a telling quote. Colbert will be much more comfortable hosting a leftty political interview show on CNN or MSNBC, rather than a late night show in the mold of Carson and Letterman:

Given where Colbert began, Jon Stewart can look back at having destroyed shows like CNN’s Crossfire, in which both sides battled it out on issues, and greatly accelerated the death of the late night talk show. That’s quite an awkward legacy for a cable TV host who’s only 62 years old.

● How Stewart Made Tucker.

● Never Forget What Jon Stewart Did To America.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

UPDATE:

ROGER KIMBALL: There’ll Always Be an England—But Will It Be Free?

Sitting here in London, I wonder what Ross Parker and Hughie Charles would think if they could join me for a pint. I suspect that the authors of the famous 1939 song “There’ll Always Be An England” would be puzzled, not to say alarmed, over some recent developments in this green and pleasant land.

“There’ll always be an England,” these songsters wrote, “and England shall be free/if England means as much to you/as England means to me.”

But the question is, does it? Does England mean as much to the ruling establishment as it once did? The words “free” and “freedom” are repeated several times in “There’ll Always Be An England.” That’s the theme, the hope, the conviction: that Britain would triumph because of its native love of freedom.

How do things look now? Let me introduce you to two recent developments that would have astonished Messrs. Parker and Charles—police tracking of “non-crime hate incidents” and a so-called “banter ban” that is on the threshold of becoming the law of the land.

Related: UK ‘Speed Cameras’ Now Look Inside the car.

The camera is the latest in ‘spot camera’ technology from German [that’s perfect – Ed] manufacturer Jenoptik Traffic Solutions.

Doubling as a red-light camera, the new technology detects motorists for more than just speeding.

These cameras will snap motorists who aren’t wearing a seatbelt and motorists using a mobile phone at the wheel.

Unlike traditional cameras, it doesn’t require road markings, the cameras operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It uses infrared low-light technology which allows images to be captured via still photos and video recordings. This eliminates the need for a camera flash, even at night and in bad weather conditions.

Exit question:

JEREMY CLARKSON: How is food made? How should I know, I’m only a farmer.

A lot of young people who know everything seem to be very concerned at the moment that various local disputes around the world will soon engulf us all, and that any day now a hailstorm of missiles will rain down on Britain, cutting off our access to Instagram, essential moisturising creams and all the wellness mental health treatments that are so vital for people in the acronym community. It terrifies them.

I was speaking to some of them last weekend and suggested that maybe the biggest problem might be the empty supermarket shelves. But they didn’t seem to understand that at all. No quinoa? It didn’t compute. And anyway, why do you need food when you have Ozempic?

As I live on a farm, you might imagine I feel quite smug about the forthcoming date with Armageddon because while you are all murdering your next-door neighbour to steal his last tin of pilchards, I’m surrounded by all that I need to survive. I can make bread and pasta and I have enough potatoes to keep me in chips for a thousand years. I also have the wherewithal to make steaks and bolognese sauce and pork pies and lamb chops and venison meatballs. I even have some beetroot.

There’s a problem, though. I’ve been farming now for six years and every day I realise how many things I don’t understand. And one of the things I don’t understand is how, for example, you turn a pig into a sausage. I could kill the pig, for sure. I have a gun. But then what? Things are even worse when it comes to cows because, first of all, you have to peel them. And how do you do that? Cows are massive and incredibly heavy. And if you’ve ever seen inside a cow, which I have, you’ll know they are also phenomenally complicated. It’s nigh on impossible to deduce which bits are used to make steaks and which are for mincing and whether that bulbous-looking thing is incredibly tasty or a bowel.

* * * * * * * * *

All of which forces me to conclude that the world today is delicate. Just look at a tin of baked beans. There’s a man who knows how to grow and harvest those beans but I bet he has no clue how to make the tomato sauce and even less of a clue about how to make a tin can. We all need each other to keep the system working. You can be a world-class end-of-the-world prepper. You can have a cellarful of machines that can turn wee-wee into water and filter nuclear particles from the air filtration system, and you can have stored half a million tins of peaches and a lifetime supply of Nurofen. But when someone tries to steal it all, do you know how to make a bullet? I’m fairly sure I’ve never met anyone who could even make a pencil.

Contra the former (p)resident, Milton Friedman really is still running the show:

RIDE THE PBS RECURSION! PBS’s Frontline Didn’t Hold Back: Trump ‘A Travesty in All of American History.’

Even as the Senate was preparing to take up defunding PBS, the taxpayer-funded network was shamelessly airing another Trump-trashing Frontline documentary on Tuesday evening.

The online blurb to “Trump’s Power and the Rule of Law” claimed to go “inside the high-stakes showdown between President Donald Trump and the courts over presidential power. Trump allies, opponents and experts talk about how he is testing the extent of his power; the legal pushback; and the impact on the rule of law.”

Hosted as usual by faceless narrator Will Lyman, this entry was even more explicitly anti-Trump than previous Frontline offerings. Although a few defenders like Steve Bannon and especially Trump advisor Mark Davis had their say, they were outnumbered, aligned against legacy media journalists on the anti-Trump side along with anti-Trump conservatives.

* * * * * * * *

Lyman found suddenly popular PBS presence, Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative appeals court judge turned “vocal Trump critic.” Luttig was overwrought over Trump’s appearance with Attorney General Pam Bondi at the Department of Justice.

Luttig: I was shocked beyond words. Even after all that we’ve seen from the president over the past eight years, to watch him stand in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, a sacred place in America, and claim that now he was going to get even by politicizing and weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI against his political enemies, was a travesty in all of American history.

I think it’s extremely safe to say that PBS shares the same view with NPR of America having been founded in Original Sin:

Taxpayers will no longer support a media executive who believes that the First Amendment is the "number one challenge" to advancing left-wing propaganda. https://t.co/Oq6UvJQkVI

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 2, 2025

Related:

As Ace of Spades co-blogger John Ekdahl tweeted in 2019, “The left, and I’m not trying to be funny or snarky, takes gun ignorance as a source of pride. They absolutely refuse to learn or educate themselves on what they seek to deny their fellow citizens.” But there are so many issues where the left simply will not learn why the other side disagrees with them, for fear that the doubleplusungood crimethink will rub off on them like cooties.

GOODER AND HARDER, MINNEAPOLIS: Minneapolis Dems endorse socialist Omar Fateh for mayor over incumbent Jacob Frey.

Minneapolis Democrats endorsed Sen. Omar Fateh in this year’s mayoral race over incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey during a Saturday convention.

“I am incredibly honored to be the DFL endorsed [sic] candidate for Minneapolis Mayor. This endorsement is a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual. It’s a mandate to build a city that works for all of us,” said Fateh, a democratic socialist who is serving his second term in the Minnesota Senate.

The 35-year-old has been described as the “Minneapolis Mamdani,” a reference to Zohran Mamdani, a socialist who won a stunning victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City earlier this year.

After Mamdani’s victory in June, the Minneapolis chapter of the DSA declared Fateh’s mayoral run to be the next battlefront in advancing their socialist agenda.

Fateh’s record includes an unsuccessful bill to make Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants and support for a 2021 charter amendment to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new “department of public safety.”

As Kevin Williamson wrote in 2021’s “Minnesota Nasty:”

Without an effective Republican opposition, the battle in Minneapolis has been Left vs. Lefter. “They’ve been organizing this for 20 or 30 years now in the city and taking it out to the suburbs,” Weber says, “and with less success trying to take it into rural Minnesota. There are no moderates, not even any traditional liberals left in the city of Minneapolis. There’s not a single statewide Republican elected official at any level of government. Every cycle for the last decade, the rallying cry in Minneapolis has been, ‘We need to replace the progressives with the ultra-progressives’ — they actually use that phrase, and that’s what they’ve got. The idea was to get to the left of the liberal Democrats, and they’ve done it.”

In June of 2020, Frey was booed by the leftist mob for refusing to kowtow to that year’s leftist rallying cry of “defund the police.” The mob may well get their wish with Fateh.

Minneapolis’ last Republican mayor served for day on December 31st, 1973.

Related:

Colbert aside, has any state had as dramatic a change in its public perception in the last decade or so than Minnesota? From very nice Midwest people, Prince, and the Replacements, to endemic corruption, weird assassinations, political extremism, and “our home is Somalia.” https://t.co/yXd4osz4hY

— The End Times (@TheAgeofShoddy) July 20, 2025

WELL, HE’LL CERTAINLY PRETEND TO: Will Gavin Newsom Ditch Woke and Move to the Center?

As Ann Coulter wrote during the 2004 election cycle:

When they’re running for office, all Democrats claim to support tax cuts (for the middle class), to support gun rights (for hunters) and to “personally oppose” abortion. And then they get into office and vote to raise taxes, ban guns and allow abortions if a girl can’t fit into her prom dress.

The common wisdom holds that “both parties” have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.

But that strategy usually works best with relatively unknown candidates (see also: Carter, Clinton, and Obama). How will Newsom, who has spent the last two decades as an extremely high-profile leftist in a state with wall-to-wall media coverage feign a pivot to the center? (See also: Kamala’s spectacularly cack-handed attempt to distance herself from her previous uber-woke statements last year.)

I’M SENSING AN AURA OF A PENUMBRA OF A PERTURBATION AS TO WHY COLBERT WAS CANCELLED:

CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.

America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.

Watch and share his message. pic.twitter.com/Rz7HcWFLYM

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 18, 2025

CBS’s billionaire owners pay Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit while trying to sell the network to Skydance.

Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late night host, slams the deal. Days later, he's fired.

Do I think this is a coincidence? NO.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 18, 2025

Just finished taping with Stephen Colbert who announced his show was cancelled.

If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.

— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) July 17, 2025

If you refuse to see what is happening, the cancellation of the Colbert show should open your eyes.

I want to explain to you what a censorship state looks like – where a corrupt government gives favors to media that suppresses criticism of the regime. pic.twitter.com/qxWJ7hqBsE

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) July 19, 2025

Thank you Stephen Colbert for your willingness to speak truth to power.

Staying far from timid.

And never bending the knee to a wannabe king. pic.twitter.com/L9EzYzU5IE

— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) July 19, 2025

Fromer NPR CEO @Vivian Schiller on CBS cancelling Colbert’s show: “This has not been a great week for free speech and speaking truth to power” pic.twitter.com/33T2mcOrTg

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 19, 2025

Thank you, Sen. Merkley. The most important issue facing Oregon voters is protecting Stephen Colbert's $15 million salary. https://t.co/djRmFxg4e0

— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) July 18, 2025

The fact that they're treating this like the cancellation of a political punditry show tells you all you need to know about what the show had become. https://t.co/xKGlVH6PdK

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 18, 2025

The news of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show cancellation is disheartening. I’ve been fortunate to appear on @colbertlateshow four different times. Each time, Stephen asked important questions and made sure to make us laugh. pic.twitter.com/ChXjVtblvn

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) July 18, 2025

A snapshot of how politics, media and entertainment intersect in 2025: Democratic senators want to know why CBS is ending Stephen Colbert's show pic.twitter.com/LoS08Ul7S1

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 18, 2025

Exit quotes:

They have no idea they're proving our point… https://t.co/onbLRwgwA0

— Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 (@chadfelixg) July 18, 2025

It’s so telling that these eulogies of Colbert’s comedy show never include the line: “he was funny” https://t.co/ErA8aqun6h

— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 19, 2025

FAFO:

Sweet dreams are made of @CovKyPD as they swiftly clear rioters illegally blocking roads and a bridge. Cross the line from "peaceful protest" to criminal acts, and you’ve earned your time behind bars. Great work, Covington PD! pic.twitter.com/2pBDDuZiwJ

— Kim "Katie" USA (@KimKatieUSA) July 18, 2025

NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW:

Great question. Why are Obama and Biden officials presumptively immune from seditious conspiracy charges?

As we heard endlessly when the Democrats launched a thousand failed "lawfare" cases against Trump — they're not "above the law." https://t.co/6pbre5EtXR

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) July 18, 2025

MEGYN KELLY, KMELE FOSTER AND MATT WELCH: Jerk Obama Speechwriter Writes in NYT About Daring to Be Friends with Rogan-listening Brother-in-Law.

TEN YEARS GONE:

1. Barack Obama wiretapped his political opponent during an election.

2. Anthony Fauci funded and oversaw the creation of the COVID virus and then covered up his involvement (and led the farcical response).

3. Joe Biden had a stroke in Las Vegas during the campaign, was…

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) July 19, 2025

YES, I TOO REMEMBER PRESIDENTS DEAN, GIULIANI, AND THOMPSON: Vance a ‘shoo-in’ to win 2028 presidential election: oddsmakers.

BRUCE BAWER: Revisiting Three Days of the Condor. A top-notch thriller turns fifty.

Like Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), Joe’s being targeted by spies for reasons he can’t fathom — and, to save his life, needs to figure out why. Thornhill’s search takes him from New York to Chicago to Rapid City; Joe’s, from New York to Washington and back. Neither of them is a superman — neither is above expressing fear and confusion — but under the circumstances, both of them are impressively unflappable, determined to get the answers. And to survive.

I’ve mentioned North by Northwest. Even more similar to Condor, plot point by plot point, is another Hitchcock thriller, The 39 Steps (1935). What distinguishes Condor from these earlier films is its post-Watergate paranoia and cynicism. The late, great critic John Simon it “an elegy of private, political, and, finally, cosmic pessimism, a kind of national, if not indeed metaphysical guilt film to enchant the disenchanted.” Hovering over the whole thing, he added, was “the vague but all-inclusive malaise of Watergate.” Yes, Graham Greene and John Le Carre had been there before, even prior to Watergate. But Condor struck the perfect balance between capturing the truly palpable pessimism of a unique national-historical moment and providing classic Hollywood entertainment of the first order.

Written by Lorenzo Semple Jr,. and David Rayfiel and based on James Grady’s 1974 Six Days of the Condor (which I remember devouring avidly on a long family car trip), Condor would be followed by decades of other action thrillers — the Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible and Taken franchises, the later James Bond pictures, and many, many others. But in these pictures the paranoia was invariably a pose, the cynicism a reflex, the darkness merely aesthetic. Not so in Condor, where it was a part of the Zeitgeist.

Read the whole thing.

DISPATCHES FROM THE KAMALA KATASTROPHE: Kamala Harris Worked at McDonald’s For… Two Weeks, New Book Asserts Without Evidence.

While a Washington Free Beacon investigation found no evidence that Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s, an alleged summer job that the failed presidential nominee tried to make a centerpiece of her campaign biography, a new book from a trio of mainstream media reporters has concluded that Harris toiled under the golden arches for “two or three weeks.”

The Free Beacon report led Trump to raise questions on the campaign trail about whether Harris was embellishing her biography. “She never worked at McDonald’s but it was a big part of her résumé,” Trump said at a campaign rally in September.

The ordeal sent the Harris campaign into a tailspin, according to 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, who omit any mention of the Free Beacon.

Harris’s aides “debated for weeks whether they should respond to Trump’s attacks about McDonald’s,” they write, and “spent weeks agonizing” about the decision.

In a post titled “Into the Fryer,” Scott Johnson of Power Line adds, “In her Boston Globe column covering the Washington Free Beacon’s greatest hits — I wrote about it in ‘No equal on the left’ earlier this week — Jill Abramson focused on the Beacon’s reporting on the higher education beat. She omitted stories with significant political impact. One such story was the Free Beacon’s challenge to Kamala Harris’s fantasia about her summer employment at McDonald’s.”

I don’t think anybody thought it would culminate in these classic moments from last year:

ICONIC 🍟 pic.twitter.com/TeSI0ffffO

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 20, 2024

“Mr. President, please don’t let the United States become Brazil!” pic.twitter.com/ZEgujQMS35

— Margo Martin (@margomartin) October 20, 2024

Though to be fair, unlike the Harris campaign, we do know conclusively that Trump really was employed by McDonald’s in his youth:

TULSI GABBARD BLOWS OPEN RUSSIAGATE WITH DOCUMENT DUMP.

That’s nice. So when do we move beyond the standard GOP failure theater in response?

UPDATE: In “To Cap an Action-Packed Week of #Winning, Tulsi Nukes ‘RussiaGate’” Stacy McCain writes, “As egregious as the RussiaGate scandal is, the overwhelming likelihood is that nobody involved in this sordid mess will ever be charged with a crime, and that if somehow Bondi does find a way to get indictments against Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al., the subsequent trial will end in a verdict of acquittal. ‘Guilty as hell, free as a bird,’ to quote Weather Underground alumnus Bill Ayers. ‘America is a great country.’”