MATT WALSH: You Won’t Believe What This CNN Host Chose To Write A Book About (Video).

METAPHOR ALERT: Movie theater ceiling collapses during screening of Captain America: Brave New World.

Two moviegoers got an extra taste of action Tuesday night — and not just from their choice to view “Captain America: Brave New World.”

During a showing of the latest Marvel flick at Liberty Cinema in downtown Wenatchee, Washington, the theater’s ceiling collapsed onto the audience, local officials said.

The Wenatchee Fire Department responded at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, finding two people in attendance. It said in a statement that no injuries were reported.

Having virtually no audience certainly increases those odds! Deadpool Creator Says Kevin Feige ‘Should Get Off the Mound. He’s Spent’ as Captain America: Brave New World Suffers Huge Box Office Drop.

DISPATCHES FROM ABC NEWS: Joy Behar Accuses Musk of Being ‘Pro-Apartheid,’ Begs Not to Be Sued.

The liberals are everything they accuse conservatives of being. During the Thursday edition of ABC’s The View, co-host Joy Behar went on an anti-immigrant tirade directed at billionaire Elon Musk. She viciously attacked him for being born in South Africa – something he had no choice in, accused him – without evidence – of being “pro-apartheid,” a “foreign agent” and “enemy of the United States,” and when she finally was told he was a naturalized citizen, she scoffed and wondered if he came in illegally.

And in an apparent attempt at heading off a possible defamation suit, she begged Musk not to sue her* while weakly walking back only one of the baseless accusations.

Behar was coming unglued as she bloviated about how “Elon Musk kisses [President Donald Trump’s] butt and strokes his tiny ego or big ego, whatever it is.”

She apparently though people born elsewhere were beneath her and that only Americans born in the country should work for the government. She sneered as she decried how Musk “was not born in this country.”

And despite the fact that Musk was a child during and through the end of apartheid, Behar claimed it was something he embraced: “[He] was born under apartheid in South Africa, so has that mentality going on. He was pro-apartheid as I understand it!”

* Flashback: ABC, Stephanopoulos Must Apologize to Trump, Pay $15 Million to Settle Defamation Suit.

Maybe ABC News needs a Tesla full of lawyers to follow the ladies from the View around whenever they’re planning to hyperventilate about Musk:

TRUMP WON’T SAY IF HE’LL APOLOGIZE TO ZELENSKYY FOR CALLING HIM A ‘DICTATOR:’

Last week, Mr. Trump called Mr. Zelenskyy a “dictator,” escalating tensions between the two. The comment came after the Ukrainian president accused Mr. Trump of living in a Russian “disinformation bubble.”

Related:

● Not Smart: Zelenskyy Just Blocked Truth Social in Ukraine.

● Ukraine’s Zelensky stays in power despite term expiring.

● Ukraine’s election day dawned with no vote in sight and little appetite for one – for now, anyway.

● Why hasn’t Ukraine held elections since the war began?

RIP: Russian chess grandmaster Boris Spassky dies aged 88.

57 YEARS AGO TODAY: The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth.

CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite presented a prime-time report about the war in Vietnam and declared in closing that the U.S. military effort was “mired in stalemate” and that negotiations might eventually offer a way out.

It was a tepid analysis, hardly novel. But over the years, Cronkite’s assessment has swelled in importance, taking on the aura of a vital, media-inspired turning point. It is so singularly important in American journalism that it has come to be called the “Cronkite Moment.”

In reality it is a moment steeped in media myth.

Notable among the myths of the “Cronkite Moment” is that President Lyndon B. Johnson watched the program and, upon hearing the anchorman’s comment about “stalemate,” snapped off the television and told an aide or aides something to this effect:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” (Versions vary.)

Cronkite’s remarks supposedly were an epiphany to the president, who realized his war policy was a shambles.

The account of the anchorman’s telling hard truth to power is irresistible to journalists, representing a memorable instance of media influence and power.

But Cronkite’s program on February 27, 1968, hardly had decisive effects. Here’s why (this rundown is adapted from a chapter about the “Cronkite Moment” in my media myth-busting book, Getting It Wrong):

Read the whole thing.

As for Vietnam post-LBJ, here are the Brothers Judd on Lewis Sorley’s 1999 book, A Better War:

The basic premise of the book is that late in 1970 or early in 1971 the United States had essentially won the Vietnam War.  That is to say, we had defeated the Viet Cong in the field, returned effective control of most of the population to the South Vietnamese and created a situation where the South Vietnamese armed forces could continue the war on their own, so long as we provided them with adequate supplies and intelligence, and carried through on our promise to bomb the North if they violated peace agreements.  This situation had been brought about by the changes in strategy and tactics which were implemented by Army General Creighton Abrams when he replaced William Westmoreland in 1968, after the military triumph but public relations disaster of the Tet Offensive.  Where Westmoreland had treated the War as simply a military exercise, Abrams understood its political dimensions.  Abrams, who had worked on developing a new war plan at the Pentagon, ended Westmoreland’s emphasis on body counts and destroying the enemy and switched the focus to regaining control of villages.  He understood that eventual victory required civilian support for the South Vietnamese government and this support required the government to provide villagers with physical security from the Viet Cong.

Abrams was accompanied in implementing this new approach by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and by William Colby, the new CIA chief in Saigon, who provided greatly improved intelligence reports and oversaw the pacification program.  Together they managed to salvage the wreckage that Westmoreland had left behind and they retrieved the situation even as Washington was drawing down troop levels.  In 1972, with the Viet Cong essentially eliminated as an effective fighting force, the North Vietnamese mounted a massive Easter offensive, but this too was decisively defeated.

Having failed to achieve their aims militarily, the North Vietnamese turned their attention to the Paris Peace Talks.  They were extraordinarily fortunate to be dealing with Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, two opportunists of the worst sort, who were willing to negotiate a deal which left the North with troops in South Vietnam.  When President Thieu balked at this and threatened to scuttle the talks, the North backed off of the whole deal and Nixon ordered the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi.  For eleven days, waves of B-52’s, each carrying 108 500-pound and 750-pound bombs, pummeled the North.  For perhaps the only time during the entire War, the North was subjected to total war, and they were forced to return to the negotiating table.  Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson’s assessment that :

“In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war.  It was over.”

At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won the insurgency phase of the War.  Additionally, the North had been defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally had the War brought home to them in a significant way.  Though the overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting to be won.

So what happened ?  Sorley has identified several problem areas that led to the eventual demise of the South.  First was the really disgraceful way in which the U. S. bugged out.

Speaking of which, for its Biden-approved denouement, Prager U:

LIVE FROM THE FRENCH LAUNDRY, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT NEWSOM! Social media blasts ‘Gaslighting’ Gavin Newsom after he announces new podcast.

Social media users savaged Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., after he announced the upcoming launch of his brand-new podcast.

Prominent critics of the governor mocked the news, choosing to remind him of the state’s problems under his leadership rather than express support for his latest media venture.

“California is a burnt mess that’s wallowing in financial ruin. So, Gavin Newsom naturally launches a podcast. WTH?! [What the hell?!]” conservative commentator Paul Szypula posted on X.

Newsom shared the news of his “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast in a video post shared to X on Tuesday morning. Billing it as an “anything but the ordinary ‘politician’ podcast,’” the upbeat-looking governor said his new show will feature guests that “I disagree with” as well as people “I look up to.”

He added that the show will delve into “real conversations” on topics concerning Americans. “What’s going on with the cost of eggs? What are the impacts – the real impacts – to you around tariffs?,” he asked, showcasing the kind of content that will be covered.

He also noted that he would get into the details of “what’s really going on inside of DOGE,” and concluded the video by saying he’ll be speaking to “leaders and architects in the MAGA movement” during the first episodes of his show.

The podcast is produced by iHeartMedia and will be the second podcast that the governor has been involved with. Newsom currently co-hosts the “Politickin’” podcast alongside former NFL player Marshawn Lynch, and sports agent Doug Hendrickson.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record accurately notes: Gavin Newsom Launches True Crime Podcast About How He Killed California.

Meanwhile, at the L.A. clown show: Kristin Crowley appeals Mayor Karen Bass’ decision to remove her as fire chief.

JOHN NOLTE: More Video Unearthed of Jake Tapper Covering up Biden’s Decline.

Tapper must think it’s still 2013, a time when the regime media’s snooty hubris could power them through any hypocrisy. Well, those days are over. Social Media and New Media are both blistering Tapper with multiple exhibits proving he actively engaged in covering up, dismissing, downplaying, and shutting down discussion of Biden’s obvious-Obvious-OBVIOUS mental and physical collapse.

But now, because he’s a prisoner of arrogance and a velvet bubble dated 2013, after four years of being an active member of the conspiracy to sweep the fact that Biden hardly knew who or where he was under the rug, Tapper has coauthored a book titled Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

Yep, the criminal is going to investigate his own crime.

If I Did It … by O.Jake. Tapper.

On Wednesday, Breitbart News reported on two instances (one from 2024) where Tapper is on the record covering up for a man the whole world could see had no business running a cash register, much less the country.

Since then, more video has been unearthed. Watch for yourself:

SUPERCUT!

Before profiting off the media conspiracy to hide Biden's decline, @jaketapper helped run it pic.twitter.com/j5m7h4JVA3

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2025

As you can see, some of those clips are from 2024.

Of course they are. Ace of Spades adds: One Media Hero Steps Forward to Blow the Lid Off the Biden Dementia Cover-Up. That Hero? Biden Defender Fake Jake Tapper.

This book is Tapper’s attempt to save the media from the public’s accurate assessment that they covered up Biden’s dementia to rig an(other) election.

His searing investigation will put the blame squarely on Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Hunter Biden, Frank Biden, plus the five or six top aides to Biden.

Note that none of these people have any future in elective politics. They were part of a failed and fraudulent presidency; the Democrat Party will not be making use of their services in the future.

Charles Cooke asks: Which Way, American Journalist?

At this stage, the only person in America who believes that the media faithfully follows a series of neutral rules is Brian Stelter — and he’s paid to say as much.

Which is to say that my view of the affair remains exactly the same as it was in the immediate aftermath of the presidential debate that tore away the curtain: There is simply no way of looking at this “failure” that does not indict everyone involved. If the press genuinely did not know, then it is staffed by people who cannot see what is in front of their noses. If the press had suspicions but did not want to investigate them for fear that it would help Donald Trump, then it is staffed by people who are corrupt and who ought never to work again as a result. And if the press knew, but felt pressured or obliged to stay quiet about it, then we are dealing with a conspiracy of world-historic proportions. I do not know what is in Tapper and Thompson’s book, but if it is not primarily an indictment of the media — coupled with some white-hot rage at the federal government for having orchestrated such a dastardly conspiracy — then it will represent a missed opportunity. At present, the media’s approval rating is about 20 percent. If, over the next two years, the press elects to forget its complicity in the ruse and dispassionately cash in on its own failure, I suspect that its popularity will soon be pushing single digits — if that.

In December of 2020, Katya Sedgewick wrote of “Biden’s Brezhnev vibes,” which was printed in the various local versions of the London Spectator, including its American spinoff:

At least nobody in the Soviet Union voted for Brezhnev — the elections were a sham with Communist party candidates running unopposed. Everything was a sham, actually. In his mumbling, robotic tones, the general secretary delivered long-winded, heavy on Marxist cliches and utterly incomprehensible televised speeches. The economy flattered, dissidents were subjected to psychiatric torture, corruption proliferated, and the rate of substance abuse skyrocketed. That period of Soviet history is known as zastoi, or stagnation. It only made sense that the man on top was some sort of sclerotic.

Like Brezhnev, Biden’s rhetoric is ridden with clichés, but of a different, folksy kind. At the time when political slogans are catchy and provocative — Make America Great Again, Black Lives Matter — Biden’s yard signs read ‘Our best days are still ahead’, and ‘Build back better’. His Twitter account is full of platitudes like ‘This is our moment — ours together — to write a newer, bolder, more compassionate chapter in the life of our nation.’ He’s just a boring ordinary guy — until he lashes out at a voter, or bites on his wife’s finger.

Is Biden the candidate of American stagnation? His cognitive and physical decline is increasingly difficult to hide and it’s highly disturbing to witness it become a subject of speculation. I’ve lived through it before and it gives me the creeps. Free citizens of a free republic shouldn’t need a Kremlinologist to decipher what’s wrong with their president.

I don’t know if Tapper responded to her column, but as we can see from the above tweet, we know precisely what his reaction would have been from 2020 until most of last year.

Glasnost may have arrived in America with Trump 2.0, but it’s going to be a while though, before the staffers at Pravda begin to understand that the party is over. Or as Kira Davis concludes: Here Lies the Legacy Media: RIP.

I’ve not had a lot of love for Tapper, but I have had respect for him up to this point. I only ever had him pegged as a sycophant Democrat apologist, but not as a liar. This new book has put a decisive end to whatever vestiges of respect anyone ever had for Tapper.

But it’s more than that. Tapper’s book marks the final nail in the coffin of the mainstream, legacy press. Conservative Americans have known for years that the legacy media is hopelessly biased and corrupt. The broader spectrum of Americans began to see the questionable practices during Trump’s New York trial. That mugshot made a lot of people- people who previously had not been paying attention -think twice. At the very least, some eyebrows were raised.

* * * * * * * *

There is nowhere for his antics to hide. Alternative media has been religiously chronicling the last five years (at least) and their viewership numbers dwarf anything Tapper could ever dream of achieving in his CNN perch. More people know the part he played in all of this than don’t.

It is a blatant lie of the highest order, made worse by the fact that he’s literally sold it for a handful of silver coins.

No matter. The jig is up. He got his money, but he sacrificed his respectability and reputation for it, and at the end of the day, that’s all any man really has.

Exit quote: “Tapper is bankrupt and so is the legacy media. His new book jacket will serve as the program for their funeral. The pall bearers will be the American media consumers who have had enough of the elitists telling us not to believe our lying eyes.”

Look at the percentage of Americans who trust the media “not very much” or “none at all.” Those are rookie numbers; Tapper should be able to pump them up much higher when his book debuts.

MONICA LEWINSKY SAYS BILL CLINTON SHOULD HAVE RESIGNED AFTER AFFAIR IN FRESH INTERVIEW:

Monica Lewinsky believes former President Bill Clinton should have resigned from the White House after their affair.

Lewinsky, appearing on Alex Cooper’s podcast Call Her Daddy, said Clinton did not handle himself appropriately when news broke that the two had an affair while she was a 22-year-old intern in the White House.

“I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was, you know, nobody’s business and to resign,” Lewinsky told Cooper, the most-listened to female podcaster in the world.

“Or, to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who was just starting out in the world under the bus,” she added.

Clinton famously lied about the affair, telling America he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” in 1998. Clinton was later impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate and remained in office.

Bill Clinton resign? All the best people in the 1990s assured me that of course heads of state have affairs; it’s all consensual stuff. Europeans take this sort of thing for granted. Why are Americans so prudish about it?

Related: The Bill Clinton interview we’d like to see.

TRUMP FINALLY CANCELLED THE WATERGATE SHOW: The return of the American Caesar.

Nixon is having his revenge. The Supreme Court’s ruling last year asserting broad presidential immunity is a kind of posthumous vindication of Nixon’s presidential defense; had the ruling been issued in 1973, it would have shipwrecked the Watergate special prosecution. The high court read the law — and the national mood — correctly. Voters don’t want lawfare to harass former presidents, nor to paralyse presidents in office. They do want an effective and decisive executive. The model of personal power that presidents from FDR to Nixon embodied is back in style.

This changes the terms of American politics. Back in the Seventies, Nixon realised that the fundamental political conflict facing America was not that between liberals and conservatives, but between those who wanted the bureaucracies to exercise institutional autonomy and those who wanted them subordinated to the elected officials. That remains true today. Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks (RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth) had liberal critics, but particularly vehement conservative ones. This was because they swore to take back control of entrenched scientific, intelligence, or military bureaucracies. Just like liberals, conservatives have their favourite bureaucracies.

This was why movement conservatism was never at peace with Nixon, and why it will likely never be at peace with Trump. The electoral appetite is for restoring competence and efficiency in government, as well as purging the state apparatus of ideological absurdities. It doesn’t exist to realise movement conservatism’s visions of a small, shrunken government.

Finally, if the resurgence of American Caesarism is “red” and Nixonian at the moment, another “blue” Caesar is certainly possible in a country that remains so narrowly divided. Caesarism isn’t the product of a stable constitutional system; it is always a volatile phenomenon, its trajectory is difficult to predict or control. The Roman emperors were great not because of their steady hand, but because they went further than anyone else in good or evil.

So far, Trump’s impact lies with demolition, not creation. Whatever the future holds, he has brought an end to a lingering national myth. The elite obsession with Nixon, as it appears in op-eds and lawfare, has never been less effective. For decades, the Watergate script was endlessly rerun and rebooted. But Trump has pulled the plug.

Read the whole thing.

THIS IS CNN: Watch: Scott Jennings Should Get Hazard Pay After Having to Deal With Insane Claims About Trump.

[SCOTT] JENNINGS: How is Trump shredding the Constition?

[ABBY] JOHNSON: My God, uh, look at what, should we go through the list?

(Johnson turns and looks at Toure to save her)

TOURE [NEBLETT]: I mean, seriously? Do we have to give you a civics lesson? That we’ve, we’ve put all the power in the executive branch. The legislative branch, the FBI, now we’re in control of the military, silencing media. This is what you do in a dictatorship.

(Crosstalk)

JENNINGS: Are you suggesting that the president is not the commander in chief of the military?

TOURE: I’m suggesting that the president is going to put in charge somebody who is going to contravine the Constitution, and in some near point, this conversation will look very silly for you because it will be obvious. Right now, you’re gaslighting, but when we get to actual rubber of the road, it will be clear.

JENNINGS: I’m interested in this conversation. He’s going to put someone in charge who will contravine the Constitution? Like who? What do you mean by that? The president is in charge of the military, is he not? You said he’s going to put someone in charge.

PHILLIP: I mean, the president is in charge of the military. That is how it works.

Trump has certainly not commandeered control of the legislative branch, as Toure claims. Still, he does control the FBI and military because that’s exactly how our constitutional government works. This is a common theme among left-wingers. They take completely normal actions by Trump and spin them as gross power grabs that threaten democracy. It is Trump’s job to control the FBI, the military, and every single bureaucratic agency. He is not “shredding the Constitution” by exerting power over those entities, and only a moron would suggest otherwise.

I’m not sure what credentials Toure brings to the table, but it’s an argument against credentialism. He is clearly out of his league when it comes to discussing even the basics of the United States government. He’s lucky Abby Phillip was there to call a timeout and save him from the rhetorical decapitating Jennings was performing.

How deep underwater was Toure during this discussion? This deep:

UPDATE: I’m so old, I can remember when Seven Days in May was a warning made by Hollywood lefties…

…Not a how-to guide for good government:

Related: Glenn’s 2016 paper: Of Coups and the Constitution.

DEVELOPING: Gene Hackman’s daughter suspects he and wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Related: Gene Hackman’s 10 greatest film roles – ranked.

UPDATE: Like I said, “Developing:” Gene Hackman and Wife’s Deaths Ruled “Suspicious” as Investigators Find No Signs of Gas Leak.

ROGER SIMON: Behind Jeff Bezos’ Changes at Washington Post.

One of the myths of our time is that there is such a thing as “evenhanded journalism.” It doesn’t exist since written by humans, all of whom are biased to one degree or another. (I believe the WaPo’s vaunted Woodward and Bernstein are responsible for institutionalizing bias in journalism—but that’s a subject for another article.)

Which leads me to what I think may be Bezos’ thinking beyond a gradual, but inexorable shift in his political views that appears to be quite genuine.

He and Elon Musk are the great business geniuses of our era so it’s worth paying attention to both. Both made their extraordinary fortunes not by inheriting them but executing brilliant concepts with unremitting hard work.

Bezos gives us a hint of his thinking in his conclusion on X:

“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

Underserved? Fill a void? What does he mean? What about the venerable Wall Street Journal, among the most important and read newspapers in our country, if not in the world? What could be more free markets than that?

My guess, and likely some of yours, is that Bezos has been paying attention to the family succession struggle at News Corp. that controls the WSJ, the NY Post and Fox News and therefore the ideology of those outlets.

Here’s what Google’s AI had to say about it (no, that’s not necessarily impartial either):

“Rupert Murdoch’s family battle with his children involves a dispute over the family trust that controls the Murdoch media empire. The battle centers on Lachlan Murdoch’s desire to become the sole heir and control the companies, and his father’s attempts to make that happen.”

Lachlan is the conservative older son who wishes to preserve the old Fox empire while his brothers, conventional Manhattan liberals, want to water it down to something approximating CNN-lite.

As Google’s AI concludes under “What’s at stake”:

“If Rupert doesn’t succeed in making Lachlan the sole heir, the conservative media empire he built could be a risk.

“The battle could also determine the future of Fox News.”

So far the courts have not looked favorably on Rupert’s request to change the family trust. Auguries are not good.

This will make for a large gap that only Newsmax is currently filling on cable—and, surprisingly successful as they are, they are still not close to News Corp. in reach.

Has this potential opening been lost on a businessman Bezos’ perspicacity? I’d throw away my trusty Kindle if it had. I repeat this is not to disparage the Amazon founder’s genuine change of views in anyway. Since I made a similar change some time ago, I would never do that. It is just to point out that what he is doing makes long-term business sense as well.

In the short run he will hemorrhage staff and, so we are told, readers. But the Washington Post was already having its problems and making little impact outside the Beltway. The way things are going under Trump, there will soon be fewer Beltway readers anyway.

Bezos, as we know from his worldwide company selling practically everything practically everywhere, does not think small. He obviously has a national, perhaps international, newspaper in mind.

The writer(s) of the Wall Street Journal’s opinion column sound pleased by Bezos’ change of heart: The Washington Post’s Freedom Turn. “We welcome the intellectual company. These days it can be lonely as a rare voice for free speech and economic liberty. Political and media fashion has shifted toward industrial policy and income redistribution, and even the Republican Party has too often come to favor government intervention in economic decisions between consenting adults. We’ll see if Mr. Bezos’s turn signals a larger change in the battle of ideas. But it will be good to have a wingman in the fight. As for our discerning readers, our respectful counsel is: Accept no substitutes. Sample the competition but come back for the real thing.”

UPDATE: Christian Toto asks: Will the Real Jeff Bezos Please Stand Up? Amazon founder’s plea for personal liberties at odds with company’s censorship.

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Hilarious: Jake Tapper to Explain Biden Brain Coverup and Why It Was a Bad Idea.

The book isn’t out yet so I could be wrong, but I think the chances that Jake Tapper will spill the beans on how he and the rest of the Pravda Media colluded with the White House to cover up Biden’s senility are about zero.

For years, my recurring headline for Joe’s innumerable gaffes was “Super Gaffe-O-Matic ’76,” a takeoff on Dan Aykroyd’s classic Saturday Night Live TV commercial parody. I ran my first “Trunalimunumaprzure!” headline near the end of the 2020 election, after Biden screamed his way through a speech, badly garbling the script on his teleprompter. On September 29^th of 2020, William Voegeli of the Claremont Institute published his column headlined “The Weak Leading the Woke,” in which he debated, “Is Biden still, you know, all there?” In contrast, Tapper was a loyal trooper until Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump in June of last year, when the new marching orders went out:

Here's Jake Tapper incensed over Joe Biden's "stutter" and outraged over claims of Biden's cognitive decline.

Now he's cashing in on a book about Biden's cognitive decline and media cover up. There is no bottom for these people.
pic.twitter.com/rdNdqh4YKQ

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 26, 2025

Tapper now tells us that he and others saw Biden’s “health problems,” but that sure isn’t what he told us all at the time. He was just as much an attack dog against Biden critics as any MSNBC flak, and his network was as much in on the conspiracy to hide Biden’s decline and slander those of us pointing it out as Karine Jean-Pierre.

A decade ago, John Nolte of Breitbart.com coined the phrase “Bensmithing” to describe how the Buzzfeed (later the New York Times and now Semafor) Democrat stenographer Ben Smith would feign being bored anytime conservatives pointed out how Obama was screwing up and dismiss each issue as a nothingburger. Perhaps Tapper will be employing Will Smith to shoot the commercials for his new book:

UPDATE:

Last year I asked @jaketapper why he & CNN were lying to the American public about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline

They all rolled their eyes and ignored my question

Jake Tapper is now publishing a book “exposing the cover up” of Joe Biden’s mental decline 💀 pic.twitter.com/X20nzeZRjP

— Savanah Hernandez (@sav_says_) February 26, 2025

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE LEFT RAILED AGAINST “CHEAP FAKES:” Viral Video of Don Jr. Arguing America ‘Should Have Been Sending Weapons to Russia’ Is Fake.

RIP: Buffy and Gossip Girl actress Michelle Trachtenberg dead at 39. “The sources told ABC News the actress recently underwent a liver transplant and may have been experiencing complications. Trachtenberg is believed to have died of natural causes and no foul play is suspected.”

JOHN NOLTE: WaPo Editor Quits After Bezos Orders Opinion Page to Defend Free Markets, Personal Liberty.

Bezos said, “I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’”

“After careful consideration, David decided to step away.”
Yeah, that’s a shame.

“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion,” Bezos said in closing. “I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

One crybaby Post staffer has already threatened to quit: “I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage,” wrote someone who works at the Post named Jeff Stein, “but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.”

Yeah, you let us know, Jeff. We’ll all be right here on the edge of our seats waiting for you to let us know.

A crybaby Post subscriber who does legal analysis for cable news is so offended by the idea of defending free markets and personal liberty, he canceled his subscription.

This looks to me like a Trump-style move to rid his failing newspaper of the Woke Parasites eating it alive. Maybe this will get more of them to self-deport quit in a huff like Jennifer Rubin did (nobody misses her). That way there’s no severance or lawsuits.

Oh, and speaking of Rubin:

Earlier: Fast Times at Bezos High: Jeff Bezos sparks outrage with overhaul of Washington Post opinion page.

DENNIS PRAGER: What’s the Difference between Socialism, Fascism, and Communism? (Video.)

RADICAL CHIC, THE BOY BAND ERA: Why the internet celebrated a killer. New video from Reason TV:

UPDATE:

The "Free Luigi" people are absolutely unhinged.

Woman explains she supports Luigi because she also killed someone (via DUI) and doesn't think she should have been punished. pic.twitter.com/xBUxMEy8mD

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ (@brad_polumbo) February 26, 2025

LET’S CHECK IN WITH MSNBC TO SEE HOW THEIR TACK TO THE CENTER IS COMING ALONG: MNSBC’s Newest Anchor Eugene Daniels Is a ‘Kamala Harris Expert’ and ‘Walking Beyoncé Encyclopedia’ Who Has Revolutionized the DC Fashion Scene.

Eugene Daniels, the Politico White House correspondent who was supposed to be the “breakout star” of the 2024 election but ended up being one of the biggest losers, is leaving the mid-tier news website to join MSNBC. Daniels, an alleged “expert in all things Kamala Harris” with a “fashion sense that mirrors his bold style of reporting,” will cohost a weekend roundtable show as part of the left-wing network’s ongoing reorganization efforts. It is unclear whether the self-described “walking Beyoncé encyclopedia” will face any wardrobe restrictions at MSNBC, but a Washington Free Beacon photographic analysis confirmed that Daniels has a bold sense of fashion, and certainly appears to admire Beyoncé, the former Destiny’s Child singer best known for being married to Jay-Z.

As legendary Austrian-American actor Rainier Wolfcastle would say:

CUE THE ZARATHUSTRA: All eight planets ‘captured in photo for first time’ – and they will be visible again this week.

A photographer is thought to have become the first person to capture all seven planets and Earth in one picture.

The rare image was made possible because a “great planetary parade” is taking place this week for the first time since 1982 – when cameras were not advanced enough to capture them all.

The panorama was taken from Somerset’s Mendip Hills on Saturday by Josh Dury, 27, an award-winning astronomical photographer dubbed the “Starman”.

Mr Dury said: “It is made of nine images, revealing Saturn, Mercury and Neptune.

“They were very tricky to spot. I used multiple image analysis and astronomy apps to confirm their location.

“As this was taken with a wide-angle lens, the nine images stitched to a panorama and a HDR blend of one of the frames to reveal Saturn, Neptune and Mercury. These three planets are not easy to see at all.”

Why do the planets align and when will they next be visible?

Currently, specialised astronomical equipment is needed to see all the planets, but on Friday they will all become visible in the night sky.

One of the leitmotifs in Stanley Kubrick’s epochal 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey was the alignment of the planets when something momentous was about to happen:

Do we have any probes heading towards Europa? We might want to advise them to attempt no landing there this week.

UPDATE: An Insta-reader notes:

Readers of Instapundit are going to be disappointed when they try to look at Uranus and Neptune. The reporter for The Telegraph overstated the phenomenon. Yes, these planets are in the sky, however, even on Friday they will be so faint that an expertly pointed telescope will be needed to see them.

Still though, I advise caution during your morning commute to Europa.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: The Kathleen Kennedy Era Is Over (Finally).

FAST TIMES AT BEZOS HIGH: Jeff Bezos sparks outrage with overhaul of Washington Post opinion page.

Jeff Bezos has sparked outrage after announcing plans to overhaul the Washington Post’s Opinion page to focus solely on support for, ‘personal liberties and free markets’.

The Amazon boss, who owns the outlet, said he is ditching a traditional, ‘broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views’.

He has also axed previous opinion editor David Shipley after he declined to get on board with the new regime.

‘We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,’ Bezos wrote on X on Wednesday.

‘We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
‘There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.’

Scores of readers have already began angrily cancelling their subscription in protest over the move.

It comes after Bezos prompted fury among his liberal staff after he ditched a planned endorsement for Kamala Harris before last year’s election.

However the decision has been lauded by Elon Musk, who wrote ‘Bravo Jeff Bezos’ above a post on X about the news.

‘I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,’ Bezos added. ‘Our country did not get here by being typical.

‘And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.’

As Liz Wolfe of Reason jokes:

Given that the paper exclaimed at the start of Obama’s first term (through its then-subsidiary Newsweek) that “We Are All Socialists Now,” the struggle session inside the WaPo has to be reaching levels not seen since the summer of 2020 — and last October, when Bezos saw the handwriting on the wall and cancelled an endorsement of Kamala.

It’s also quite a turn from when the paper went full Alinsky-style “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” on Eric Clapton in 2021, because he was a prominent celebrity (who makes his living playing music in sold-out hockey arenas) who disagreed with the official lockdown policy to fight covid, and dared disclose he had a bad reaction to his vaccination shot.

Can Bezos do it? Given that DC is a one-industry company town, Jeff Blehar of NRO is skeptical: The Washington Post Wants You to Know It’s Done Being the Washington Post.

So that’s why the turn to “free markets” and “personal liberties” strikes me as misguided. Does Jeff Bezos not understand the irrevocable, structurally inalterable nature of the newspaper he purchased years ago? Since when has the Washington Post ever stood for either “personal liberties” or “free markets”? The Post stands for the primacy of federal government before all other things, and has thus proudly stood against personal liberty and free markets in its reporting and commentary for decades — or in favor of them, or whatever currently best served the interests of its federal government readership. That is literally its brand. Now Bezos seems to think it can become The Economist.

We’ll see. But I suspect the Post can’t be any other thing than what it is right now unless it simply reboots as a national newspaper (good luck with that!), because Washington, D.C., is a one-industry city; the paper was methodically tailored by its former owners the Grahams to feed and reflect the attitudes and desires of those who staff and control the federal government. I’m aware that the idea of the “federal government” is currently highly unpopular in these DOGE days of winter, but that’s their customer base, and they’re not about to find a new one.

(As far as the internal reaction from the Post’s own opinion page writers is concerned, you’re not going to top poor Philip Bump’s spontaneous bleat of dismay over on Bluesky — even if I cannot reprint it here.)

Heh, indeed.

UPDATE: This seems entirely plausible:

Meanwhile, Kurt Schlichter spots a disgruntled lefty Post reader, who like FDR in 1944 and Margaret Brennan of CBS last week, perversely conflates laissez-faire freedom with totalitarian national socialism:

UPDATE:

One more update (from Steve):

https://t.co/DlslxT2KCU pic.twitter.com/h3q3hOJEy4

— Confirmed Miscer ⚔️🍁🔫 (@ManDaveJobGood) February 26, 2025

Seems legit.

GOING GREEN, YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT WRONG:

MOST OF RACHEL MADDOW’S STAFF TO BE LET GO AMID MSNBC CUTS: Report.

The majority of the production crew working on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show will be let go, The Guardian reported on Tuesday night.

For the first 100 days of the Trump administration, Rachel Maddow is hosting her show on the network five nights a week after hosting on Mondays only. It was reported this week that MSNBC is overhauling some of its programming, as Joy Reid has exited the network after hosting the last episode of The ReidOut on Monday. Alex Wagner’s Alex Wagner Tonight was also canceled, but she will remain at MSNBC. The network also shuttered its Miami operations and with it, José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show.

The Guardian reported that most of Maddow’s production crew members are being let go because they also worked on Wagner’s show[.]

But what of Maddow herself? Megyn Kelly Questions Whether NBC Executives Have The ‘Testicular Fortitude’ To Fire Rachel Maddow.

In other news from the far-left Comcast-owned network:

As the firings of Reid and her staff illustrate, MSNBC’s coffers are appearing quite drained after the 2024 election was decided. I hope they have the wardrobe budget to make this work: