Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

January 27, 2026

GOOD LUCK TRANSFORMING THE TITANIC INTO AN F-22 RAPTOR: Bari Weiss Unveils Sweeping Vision: “I Am Here to Make CBS News Fit for Purpose in the 21st Century.”

CBS News will undergo a radical transformation in the coming months, with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss outlining her vision at an all-hands meeting Tuesday morning.

Weiss delivered a PowerPoint presentation that outlined her view on the state of media and how CBS can remain relevant in a challenging time for broadcast news. She also noted the barrage of interest and press in her arrival.

“I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” Weiss told staff. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers a a journalist: transparency. Clarity. Straight talk. So here it is as plan as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.”

Related: CBS News Hires New Contributors As Part Of Bari Weiss’ New Strategy For News Division.

CBS News unveiled a slate of contributors who are joining the network as part of Bari Weiss‘ new strategy for the news division.

The list of new contributors includes conservative historian Niall Ferguson and Patrick McGee, who specializes in tech and China and is a contributor to Weiss’ The Free Press, which CBS-parent Paramount acquired when she was tapped to lead the news division, according to a source familiar with the plans.

Also on the list are podcasters Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, chef Clare de Boer, physician Mark Hyman, author Caroline Chambers and Casey Lewis, who has a Substack about emerging trends in youth culture.

During her meeting, Weiss reminded CBS staffers that she knows “there’s a lot of nostalgia” for the Cronkite era:

Back then, 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Some were on the left, some were on the right. But they trusted him*. Through Cronkite they inhabited a shared world with shared facts and a shared sense of reality.

We can’t reverse time’s arrow. He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.

What we can do is what journalists do best: look at the world as it actually is.

We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves.

That sounds like excellent advice for CBS – if only they were thinking that way back in September of 2004.

*Far too much in retrospect, but to make another awkward Titanic analogy, why quibble when someone is at least making an effort to steer the ship away from the icebergs?

UPDATE: Cronkite ‘the most-trusted?’ Where’s the evidence?

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

BEGUN, THE AI WARS HAVE: MSNBC uses edited photo of man shot by ICE that makes him appear more masculine.

Imagine dying for a liberal cause and having liberal wine moms run your face through a looksmax filter so you look more like a conservative Chad.

That is Alex Pretti.

Or, I should say, that is an altered photo approximating Alex Pretti.

But as we saw yesterday, AI can manipulate images into much worse hallucinations: Headless Agent Retweeted by Clueless Four-Star:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

JUST WORK AROUND THE PERMANENT BLUE CITY BACKGROUND NOISE:

Posted at 1:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

GREAT MOMENTS IN LATE NIGHT ENTERTAINMENT: All Jimmy Kimmel Does Is Lie (And Cry).

Now that a second U.S. citizen has inserted himself into a legal law enforcement matter with deadly results, we get the Kimmel waterworks.

Twice.

“I spent the weekend like probably a lot of you did, looking at my phone and just feeling shocked and sick at what’s happening in Minneapolis … One video after another: screaming people being torn from their families, Americans, people who were born in the United States being pulled out of their cars for the crime of having an accent or whatever. Children, small children, babies being tear-gassed, taken into custody, separated from their parents.”

For those keeping score, that’s a jumble of lies, misinformation and narrative dodging. And, sadly, it’s par for the course.

And he wasn’t done.

“Just one atrocity after another being committed by this gang of poorly trained, shamefully led, mask-wearing goons. And that is what they are: They’re goons committing vile, heartless, and even criminal acts. It’s sickening to watch, and it’s frustrating to watch.”

Kimmel, at least on paper, is a late-night comedian. He’s taken on a new role, one egged on by the Left and Legacy Media outlets (but we repeat ourselves).

He’s the King of the anti-Trump Resistance. Comedy? Laughs? Merriment? That’s no longer his prime directive, and it hasn’t been for some time.

Not everyone is deserving of the Kimmel waterworks, of course:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

FASTER, PLEASE:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

CHANGE: The Minnesota 180 on ICE.

Something dramatic has changed up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Keep in mind, on Sunday night, another clash outside another hotel in the Minneapolis area turned out differently, as federal officers responded before the Minneapolis Police Department could get its officers in place:

According to an MPD spokesperson, officers received reports of a group protesting outside the Hilton Home2 Suites and making noise. An MPD officer inside the building was assigned to keep guests and staff safe while providing real-time updates to the department.

As the crowd became “disorderly,” MPD said it began its plan to move in, de-escalate the situation and make arrests. Personnel on standby were recalled to duty, patrol officers across the city were called in, and the department requested mutual aid from the Minnesota State Patrol, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and several metro area law enforcement agencies.

After forming a plan, MPD and assisting agencies prepared to surround the crowd, issue dispersal orders and make mass arrests. Before they moved in, MPD said federal law enforcement arrived on scene “without notice or communication” and deployed chemical munitions. MPD stated it did not deploy any chemical munitions.

Was Sunday night’s sequence of events a garden-variety matter of local police wanting a plan in place before they engaged a disorderly crowd, less than 48 hours after a controversial shooting? Or was it foot-dragging, aligned with local officials’ opposition to the presence of ICE in their city and state?

My money is on the latter:

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE. The Issue Is Always the Revolution:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

JUDICIAL LAWFARE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

WHY THEY FIGHT:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 27th, 2026

January 26, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “Yeah, I’m In the Media. Screw You.”

—The late Ginny Carroll, a bureau chief with the then-Washington Post-owned Newsweek, who admitted on C-SPAN that she wore a button with the above message at the 1992 Republican convention.

The New Hotness? Washington Post Braces for Massive Layoffs.

Bezos has probably spent more than a quarter billion dollars keeping the paper going for just 3 years. And my guess is that all the metrics are going in the wrong direction. In other words, there’s no end in sight to the losses. But the staff reaction to his attempt to stop the bleeding is that he’s not a good steward.

Thanks for the $300 million, Jeff, but you suck!

Some of this is definitely self-inflicted. The paper was making a profit during Trump’s first term because it went all in on resistance journalism. It had a staff of progressive voices that became well known on the anti-Trump left. So when there was no Trump to bash starting in 2020, readership declined. Then when Bezos demanded a bit more neutrality from the paper (canceling an endorsement of Kamala Harris) a quarter millions progressive subscribers cut them off. Simply put, the Post made itself a paper that catered to the far left and readers came to expect that. There’s no going back without angering a lot of those people and losing their support. That’s where things are now.

The layoffs are expected to happen in early February, so expect more on this by next week.

The Sulzbergers managed to diversify the revenue streams of the New York Times sufficiently over the last decade to the point where, as one wag said on LinkedIn in 2024, to him, the paper is “is basically a game and cooking app, with occasional detours into the news when I want to feel enraged about something:”

This tracks our household’s experience. Last year, I upgraded from the $20/mo basic digital subscription for the Times to the $25 All Access Tier. We use the NY Times Recipe App (which was a separate subscription) several times each week to plan and cook meals. I’m a sports junkie, so this gives me access to The Athletic. And now we have unlimited access to all puzzles (though, ironically perhaps, none of us play Wordle). For me, it’s Sudoku and sometimes the crossword. Honestly, the news is so depressing these days that I can’t stand to read it anyway.

The New York Times is basically a game and cooking app, with occasional detours into the news when I want to feel enraged about something.

In contrast, Amazon is Bezos’ diverse revenue stream, and the Post his money pit. No wonder he wants to cut the bleeding before likely offloading the carcass to its next owner.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

CAPITALISM, THE UNKNOWN IDEAL:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE KANYE: Kanye West says car crash turned him into a Nazi in full-page Wall Street Journal advert.

Kanye West has blamed a car accident for a months-long psychotic episode in which he declared he was a Nazi.

The rapper said the incident, which happened 25 years ago, caused an undiagnosed brain injury he believes contributed to his bipolar disorder.

On Monday, West took out a full-page advert in The Wall Street Journal, publishing a letter titled “To Those I’ve Hurt” in which he apologised for his anti-Semitic behaviour, including making offensive statements and selling T-shirts bearing swastikas.

In February 2025, West posted a series of anti-Semitic messages on X, writing: “I am a Nazi” and “I love hitler”.

As psychologist Geoffrey Miller tweeted in response, “Come on. He’s 48 years old. If you haven’t figured out by age 30 that you have bipolar, and you’re not taking your mood stabilizers, and getting good support from family, friends, therapists, & psychiatrists, that’s a serious failure — both medical and moral. And it’s not plausible that he’s been in a delusional manic episode for his eight solid years of antisemitism…He deserves no sympathy and no forgiveness.”

Still though, I’ll be curious to see what the next angle to generate maximum PR attention is going to be.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

HEADLESS AGENT RETWEETED BY CLUELESS FOUR-STAR: Former US Special Operations Commander Shares AI-Generated Anti-ICE Propaganda About Pretti Shooting.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting in Minneapolis that left anti-ICE insurgent Alex Pretti dead, an obviously AI-generated photo purporting to clearly show Pretti being executed by Border Patrol agents is making the rounds on social media. That alone isn’t surprising; it happens any time there’s a major event. What’s surprising is the identity of one of the people sharing it as if it’s real and using it for anti-government propaganda purposes.

Meet Gen. Raymond A. “Tony” Thomas III, retired, who served as commander of the US Special Operations Command from 2016 to 2019.

While the resolution of the photo is quite good — much better than the grainy phone videos going around — the resolution also allows us to see that the agent kneeling doesn’t have a head, and that one of his legs seems a little bionic. Thomas shared the photo in response to posts from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, former US Navy Reserve intelligence officer Jack Posobiec, Attorney General Pam Bondi, venture capitalist Keith Rabois, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Why would he do this?

The leg morphing into a rifle is a nice touch. Perhaps the headless agent just wandered in from a Tarantino movie:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

RIP: Sly Dunbar, Sly and Robbie reggae drummer, dead at 73.

Lowell “Sly” Dunbar, the Jamaican drummer for the former reggae group Sly & Robbie, has died. He was 73.

Dunbar’s wife, Thelma, confirmed the news to Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner on Monday.

“About seven o’clock this morning I went to wake him up and he wasn’t responding, I called the doctor and that was the news,” Thelma said, though she didn’t confirm the cause of death.

“Yesterday was such a good day for him,” Thelma continued. “He had friends come over to visit him and we all had such a good time. He ate well yesterday … sometimes he’s not into food. I knew he was sick … but I didn’t know that he was this sick.”

Dunbar’s daughter, Natasha, told TMZ the musician passed away at his home in Kingston, Jamaica. Like Thelma, Natasha also did not disclose the cause of death.

“As one half of Sly & Robbie, Sly helped shape the sound of reggae and Jamaican music for generations. His extraordinary talent, innovation, and lasting contributions will never be forgotten,” read a statement from the family, per TMZ. “Sly’s music, spirit, and legacy touched people around the world, and we are deeply grateful for the love and support during this difficult time.”

Dunbar was such a prolific session drummer in the 1970s that Brian Eno said, perhaps with only slight exaggeration, in his famous 1979 speech turned 1983 Downbeat article, “The Studio As Compositional Tool,” “when you buy a reggae record, there’s a 90 percent chance the drummer is Sly Dunbar. You get the impression that Sly Dunbar is chained to a studio seat somewhere in Jamaica, but in fact what happens is that his drum tracks are so interesting, they get used again and again.”

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

JOHN NOLTE: Staff Melts Down as Serial-Lying Washington Post Faces ‘Massive Layoffs.’

To begin with, over the weekend, we learned that after spending tens of thousands of dollars, making reservations, and securing over a dozen credentials, the cash-strapped Washington Post reversed course and announced it would not be covering the upcoming Winter Olympics.

Then we learned that “massive layoffs” are imminent — I should say “more” massive layoffs because the Incredible Shrinking Washington Post has already suffered massive layoffs.

We’re told this new round of “massive” [tee hee] layoffs” could kill off its entire sports desk and decimate its foreign desk.

That’s a shame:

UPDATE: “Stewards:”

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “I’m Not a Witch.” 

The New Hotness? Kanye West apologizes for ‘reckless’ antisemitism in full-page Wall Street Journal ad: ‘I am not a Nazi.’

Kanye West has issued an apology to Black and Jewish communities after years of spewing racist and antisemitic beliefs.

“I lost touch with reality. Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem. I said and did things I deeply regret. Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst,” he wrote in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal.

“You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to have someone who was, at times, unrecognizable. Looking back, I became detached from my true self,” West, 48, added.

But wait, which “true self” is that? The one who in 2005 blurted out on live TV during a Katrina fundraiser that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” or the one who was photographed wearing a swastika chain while hanging out with Nick Fuentes and recording a song titled, “Heil Hitler?”

So what’s the next phase for the man whom 20 years ago Time magazine dubbed “the smartest man in pop music?”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026

TIM WALZ CALZ HITLER!

Here’s Walz yesterday, comparing the children of Somali grifters to Anne Frank: Tim Walz Criticized for Minnesota Anne Frank Comparison.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has prompted a backlash after comparing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities to the terror of the Holocaust documented by Anne Frank.

Walz, a Democrat, made the remark during a press conference on Sunday after the latest deadly shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal officers in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti’s death on Saturday came just weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good.

“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” he said. “Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”

The remark quickly drew condemnation on social media, primarily from conservatives, though some defended the comparison.

Here’s Trump today: “Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength. I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”

John Hinderaker writes, “Did Walz really call the President to suggest they work together? It is hard to imagine, but that is what Trump says. Tom Homan’s presence in Minnesota can only help, although the situation here is so far gone that the 11th Airborne may be a more practical solution.”

How badly were Walz and Harris gaslit by their internal polling last year? When Walz was constantly redlining the Godwin meter whenever he mentioned the Bad Orange Man, didn’t he ever stop think, “Hey, if Kamala loses, I’m going to have to work with this guy. Maybe I should dial the rhetoric back a notch or twenty.”

Related: Ringleader Behind the Somali Fraud Scandal Says There’s No Way that Walz and AG Keith Ellison Didn’t Know She Was Stealing a Quarter Billion Dollars.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26th, 2026
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