HEY, LET’S WATCH ABC NEWS WHIP ITS AUDIENCE INTO A FRENZY: Voters view one another across partisan divide with increasing animosity.

—Headline, ABC News, November 1st.

And ABC News is really working hard at bridging the divide!

WATCH: ‘The View’ tells its audience to skip holiday gatherings with family because Trump won

These people are unwell.pic.twitter.com/IOUEg5EAXq

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 13, 2024

As former ABC Newsman Mark Halperin predicted in October:

[I]f Trump wins, it could lead to a profound shift within the Democratic Party, calling it “the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.”

“I think tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, and their vision of the future for themselves and their children,” Halperin stated.

After Carlson asked, “Are you being serious?” Halperin replied, “One hundred percent serious.” He emphasized that the ramifications of such a crisis would require increased access to mental health professionals, citing potential workplace trauma and rising rates of alcoholism and broken marriages.

Halperin, who has covered every U.S. presidential election since 1988 and co-authored the book Game Change, chronicling the 2008 presidential campaign, elaborated on the depth of the crisis, saying, “For many Democrats, Trump’s presidency represents the worst possible outcome. The psychological toll will be sustained and unprecedented. I don’t think the country is ready for it.”

Orson Welles’ ability to convince a few radio listeners in 1938 that the denizens of the Red Planet had landed has absolutely nothing on today’s MSM to whip its hapless audiences into a frenzy over the Red State Menace, and I’m sure, that like Welles, they revel in it.

FDR MEETS HITLER! Trump Meets With Biden, Republican Lawmakers in D.C.

I find it hilarious that Biden is hosting Trump even though it is tradition and the norm. He’s also trying to show he’s a better person than Trump with a peaceful transfer of power.

However, it doesn’t make sense since Trump is *literally* a threat to democracy, Nazi, fascist, etc.

Someone tell the left that Biden is hosting Hitler and transferring power to him.

The Democrats (and the rest of us) would be much better served by an in-house media that doesn’t dial the hyperbole up to 11: Biden was never going to be the second coming of FDR, as Time magazine predicted in late October of 2020, and Trump was never the second coming of Hitler, as the entire left shouted in lockstep, likely after Camp Kamala looked at their dreadful internal polls and sounded the alarm in October of this year. The sugar high of the Two Minute Hate produces a spectacular crash after it’s over, both at the top of the Democratic Party (as Biden is discovering today), and among its foot soldiers:

UPDATE: Always nice to see Trump having a cheerful in-person meeting with one of his voters:

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Kamala Harris Campaign Gave $500k to Al Sharpton’s Nonprofit Weeks Before Glowing Interview With Anti-Semitic MSNBC Host.

UPDATE:

As John Podhoretz tweets, MSNBC will likely do absolutely nothing, since they’ve been paying Sharpton protection money since 2011:

TRUMP TAPS FOX NEWS HOST PETE HEGSETH FOR SECRETARY OF DEFENSE:

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as the next secretary of defense.

Hegseth’s appointment, which is sure to attract the ire of Democrats* given his long-standing association with Fox, will require confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Before joining Fox in 2014, Hegseth served as an Army National Guard captain in Afghanistan and Iraq and earned the Bronze Star medal for his service in the latter.

“Pete Hegseth has been an exceptional host on FOX & Friends and FOX Nation and a best-selling author for FOX News Books for nearly a decade,” Fox News Media said in a statement. “His insights and analysis especially about the military resonated deeply with our viewers and made the program the major success that it is today. We are extremely proud of his work at FOX News Media and wish him the best of luck in Washington.”

The Princeton and Harvard graduate has been most vocal advocating on behalf of veterans, serving as executive director of Vets for Freedom from 2007-2010. He was even considered by Trump to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs during the former president’s first term in office.

Few had Hegseth on their radar for the prominent role, as Trump seems set on wasting no time filling out his cabinet ahead of his second term in the Oval Office come January.

* Well, not all Democrats. Bill Kristol and S.E. Cupp offered their support for Hegseth over a decade ago, and there’s no reason they’d renege on it now, would they?

BYLINES OF BRUTALITY: ABC News and Fox Sports employee Michael Strahan rips London Daily Mail journalist’s iPhone out of his hand: Furious Michael Strahan explodes when asked about Fox Sports national anthem controversy.

A raging Michael Strahan lashed out at a DailyMail.com reporter on Tuesday and grabbed his cell phone when asked for a comment on the furor surrounding his national anthem faux-pas.

The 52-year-old Good Morning America star is yet to answer questions about the controversy that led to fans calling for him to be fired from Fox Sports for not holding his hand over his heart during the national anthem on Sunday.

Strahan stood with his hands folded in front of him next to his Fox Sports co-stars at Naval Base San Diego as the national anthem was played.

He was the only man in the line-up not to place his hand over his heart – and quickly drew criticism from viewers, some of whom called it ‘cowardly’ and ‘disrespectful’.

While Fox Sports is standing by him and others have leaped to his defense, Strahan is yet to address the controversy directly.

But when calmly asked for his comment on Tuesday after arriving home from co-hosting ABC’s Good Morning America, he immediately exploded.

‘Don’t come to my house, man!’ he yelled, grabbing the reporter’s phone.

He then tossed the phone into a nearby bush, before making his way into his $20million townhouse with his girlfriend Kayla Quick.

* * * * * * * *

A source told DailyMail.com that his ‘peers have his back and understand that he wasn’t making the moment about himself.’

Except that he was — and is — doing just that.

(Classical reference in headline.)

THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS, YANKEE: Philadelphia chain Wawa crowned the best convenience store in America — beating Gen Z favorite Buc-ee’s.

Yes, but did America’s Newspaper of Record do a video on the wonders of Wawa, complete with a cameo from RedState’s Kira Davis? I think not: Californians Move to Texas, Episode 5: Buc-ee’s!

More here: Watch: Hilarious Babylon Bee Take as Californians Discover the Wonder of Buc-ees.

TAKE IT FROM A METROPOLITAN LIBERAL — WE ARE WHY TRUMP WON:

COIN OF THE DOGE: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Appointed to Lead the ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’

TRUMP PICKS FORMER INTEL DIRECTOR JOHN RATCLIFFE TO HEAD THE CIA:

John Ratcliffe, who served as President-elect Trump’s principal intelligence advisor during his first presidential term, will serve as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency when Trump moves back into the White House.

Ratcliffe is one of several appointees announced in the past week who will fill key positions during Trump’s second term.

“From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public,” Trump said in a statement. “When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People.”

Exit quote:

one of John Ratcliffe's best moments was demolishing Peter Strzok, the FBI head of counterintelligence who colluded to destroy Donald Trump

Critical to have someone like this at CIA director, to stop the next russiagate 2.0 hoax pic.twitter.com/pW5weJlMZA

— Gregg Re (@gregg_re) November 12, 2024

ELON MUSK WILL NEVER RECOVER FROM THIS:

As for Rubin herself, as Dan McLaughlin tweets, “More people on the center-left & left (such as Jennifer Rubin) abandoning Twitter means only deepening their ideological cocoon while limiting their audience reach. Seems a bad trade!”

HOW IT STARTED: Why Isn’t the President Angry?

Obama’s aloofness was practiced, which is why he needed to be instructed out of it. But Joe Biden’s detachment is something else. If his administration’s bottomless tolerance for disruptive and unsympathetic anti-Israel demonstrators and its lopsided fixation with policing the conduct of Israel’s war against a mutual adversary didn’t come off as blinkered before, it most certainly will now. Maintaining that myopia still would reflect a degree of indifference to our shared reality that Americans should not tolerate in our president.

Perhaps the president isn’t indifferent. Maybe he’s simply scared — not just for his own reelection prospects, tenuous though they may be, but of what acknowledging Hamas’s actions obliges him to do. That diagnosis would make sense. His administration has been plagued by fear; fear of Russian escalation if they gave Ukraine the tools to win its war rather than simply not lose, fear of what the Taliban would do if the U.S. blew through a self-set deadline to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, fear of having to restore stability to a region rocked by Iranian-backed terrorist attacks on Americans and their allies. The White House projects weakness and intimidation, a posture that encourages our adversaries. America’s enemies do not understand where Biden’s lines are, and they will keep testing him until they find one. This must be it.

Biden has shown incalculable patience with Hamas’s dilatory tactics, but that patience should reach its end with the news that it was all a game. The president and the nation he leads have been soundly embarrassed. It’s incumbent on Biden to summon at least some of the rage his countrymen feel and act accordingly. Americans and the world are watching, Mr. President. It’s your move.

—Noah Rothman, NRO, April 11, 2024.

How it’s going: Biden snaps at Israeli reporter in latest terse moment with media: ‘Think you can keep from getting hit in the head by a camera behind you?’

Lame-duck President Biden rounded on an Israeli TV reporter Tuesday after the correspondent asked whether Biden believed an agreement to free dozens of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip is possible before he leaves office in January

“President Biden, do you think we can get a hostage deal by the end of your term?” Israel Channel 13’s Neria Kraus asked Biden, 81, ahead of his meeting with Isaac Herzog, president of the Jewish state.

“Do you think you can keep from getting hit in the head by a — a camera behind you?” snapped an irritated-looking Biden in response.

Kraus caught the moment on video and appeared to hold back laughter as Biden pivoted to his Oval Office meeting with Herzog, whom he hailed as “a personal friend.”

The New York Post today.

I am legitimately jealous of Joe Biden right now. He's got it made. Literal Senioritis, and he doesn't give a hoot.

And why should he? He still gets the free airy-plane rides, nobody really cares that he isn't doing anything, and he didn't lose an election. What's not to like? https://t.co/s9qRWnDaz9

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) November 12, 2024

Finally, with less than 70 days left in his administration, Biden found an issue involving Israel to be passionate about: being as crude and insulting to an Israeli reporter as he’s been throughout his career with American journalists — the vast majority of whom have been his party’s operatives with bylines.

EXILE ON MAIN STREET: Rolling Stone Validates Early Trump Staff Picks by Labeling Them THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.

Hey, not everybody can be as respectable as Charles Manson and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, you know.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BEES: Well-lit cities keeping bees awake and ruining their love life, claims study.

Light pollution is making bees sleep-deprived and harming their mating waggle dance, a study has found.

Artificial light from vehicles, street lights, road signs and other sources are seeping into the natural world and increasingly disrupting the lives of insects and also animals.

A study of honey bees has found that exposure to light around the clock disrupts the internal body clock of the insects and causes them to sleep less.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to a worsening of the waggle dance which is essential to how the bees find a mate and breed.

The waggle dance is also an intricate communication system between the bees which informs hive mates about the location of food sources.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, compared groups of bees that enjoyed normal sleep in the dark with others that were subjected to continuous artificial light.

Gooder and harder, California – your bourgeois desire to want to be able to walk home at night in safety is how you get the Asian Murder Hornets. Or something far, far worse:

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD ONCE AGAIN DOING STRAIGHT UP REPORTAGE: Experts Confirm Batman: The Animated Series Was Pinnacle Of Human Civilization.

“The data doesn’t lie. It’s the objective truth that when Kevin Conroy landed the role of Batman for the animated series in 1992 that was the exact moment when human civilization reached its highest aspirations in art and culture,” said polymath genius Conrad Leopold Winston from his top-secret hi-tech lab staffed by a team of crack experts working around the clock to understand and prevent the demise of our species.

“Apathy will set in as humanity begins to realize that nothing it can come up with will ever approach the glory that is Batman: The Animated Series. We are fated to see civilization collapse as everyone stops trying. We can only look back with nostalgia. Humanity has no future,” he added with a sigh.

“It was a banger,” added fellow expert Gordon Cornellius Augustus while looking at still frames from the show with his electron microscope. “Absolutely everything lined up on this one. The show was sophisticated, despite the trappings of ostensibly being a simple after-school cartoon that caused children to procrastinate on their homework. Its mature tone and film noir aesthetics combined with stellar orchestrated music and expert-level writing which always remained faithful to the source material made Batman: The Animated Series stand out.”

Endorsed.

NEW SHERIFF ON THE WAY:

The Old Border Czar VS The New Border Czar pic.twitter.com/9Ie8JRsroR

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 12, 2024

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You may have seen on YouTube videos that are AI fever dream interpretations of say, what a Star Wars movie would have looked like if it had been made in the 1950s:

Here’s how those videos are made using AI and assembled on everyday video editing software:

MSNBC LOSES OVER HALF OF ITS PRIMETIME AUDIENCE AS RATINGS TANK:

MSNBC once again beat CNN in the ratings game, but for all the wrong reasons.

New Nielsen ratings show the liberal network has lost more than half of its primetime audience since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last week, a sea change that signals its viewers are discouraged and tired of the spin. Fox News reported that MSNBC saw a 54% ratings drop after averaging 1.1 million primetime viewers for most of October. That number stood at 736,000 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week. The change comes as Fox News’s viewership climbed 61% in the same three-day period, a “Trump bump” that has executives elated.

MSNBC will likely claw some percentage of their audience back if they once again go full on into #resistance porn as they did from 2017-to early 2021. But in any case, a percentage of their audience might not be the only thing the cable channel loses going forward: Report: Comcast to Put MSNBC and Oprah Founded Oxygen Networks Up For Sale in Cable TV Sell Off.

Comcast, the media powerhouse behind NBCUniversal, is stirring up major buzz in the entertainment industry. The company recently announced that it’s considering a significant move: separating from several of its top cable networks, including MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, and Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen. This surprising revelation came from Comcast President Mike Cavanagh during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, and it has left media analysts and TV enthusiasts asking a ton of questions about the future of these beloved channels.

While Comcast’s broadcast network NBC and its streaming service Peacock will be spared from this proposed separation, it’s a clear signal that the cable TV world is shifting dramatically—and Comcast might be the next major company to embrace that change.

As John Nolte adds: Signs of the Collapse of Corporate Media Influence Are Everywhere.

Related:

Glorious. pic.twitter.com/cmDqKl9Dr9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 12, 2024

QUESTION ASKED: Will Trump’s new cabinet be good for Israel?

Trump has pleased Jewish supporters with three early Cabinet-level appointments. Trump chose New York Representative and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik to be his ambassador to the United Nations. There, Stefanik plans to advance “America First peace through strength leadership on the world stage.”

Stefanik has repeatedly spoken in support of Israel and Israeli hostages since October 7. However, she truly stood out and won many Jewish fans with her tough questioning of university presidents during the House’s campus antisemitism hearings last academic year. Given that Israel remains the United Nation’s idee fixe, and the institution remains awash in antisemitism, Stefanik should be well prepared for her new position.

Trump’s second appointment is also a New Yorker. Trump has tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, a Jewish Republican, to be his Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. Before New York’s Jewish Democrats — particularly the Orthodox — crossed over to vote for Trump this month, they voted for Zeldin when he ran for governor of New York as a voice of moderation, back in 2022. Zeldin posted on Twitter/X, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalise our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

The third Cabinet-level appointment, by far the biggest name so far, is reported to be Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. Rubio has represented Florida’s sizeable Jewish community in the Senate since his election in 2010. The New York Times characterised Rubio as “a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China and Iran in particular.” Rubio is also knowledgeable about foreign policy, fluent in all the issues he would have to handle as Secretary. Finally, it’s worth noting that unlike others who could have been named as Trump’s Secretary of State, Rubio is not an isolationist and would immediately reverse Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s intense hostile-to-Israel energy. America’s allies abroad should be cheered by Rubio’s selection.

* * * * * * * *

There are still consequential positions like Secretary of Defense and Attorney General that remain unclaimed, but Trump is off to a strong start with his nominations. American Jews who supported Trump over concerns about antisemitism and Israel should feel comfortable that Trump sees them, and their concerns should be addressed by the incoming administration. Change is coming.

Worst. Hitler. Ever.

Related: Trump nominates Mike Huckabee for US ambassador to Israel.

 UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE: The Three Historians: Niall Ferguson, Victor Davis Hanson, and Andrew Roberts (Video).

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: FEMA worker Marn’i Washington breaks silence on not helping Trump-voting hurricane victims.

The FEMA boss who was fired after ordering volunteers not to approach homes displaying Trump signs in Florida after Hurricane Milton has insisted her edict ‘was not isolated’ and also happened in North Carolina.

Speaking out for the first time since she was fired, Marn’i Washington accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of ‘lying’ about the scandal, and making her the scapegoat of a wider practice.

Washington was blasted publicly and lost her job after a text chain was leaked that showed her instructing colleagues to ‘avoid’ houses that had Trump signs in their yards.

Washington told DailyMail.com she is seeking an attorney and is ‘at risk’ as a result of the backlash she’s received. ‘I have information that proves FEMA is lying,’ she said.

In a podcast appearance last night, she went further — claiming more FEMA employees are guilty of the same bias, but that she is the only one being hung out to dry.

‘FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation. This is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance,’ Washington said in an interview with YouTube podcaster Roland Martin.

‘Not just in the state of Florida. You will find avoidance in the Carolinas,’ she revealed.

She says she was directly following FEMA protocol when she issued the controversial directive.

As Karol Markowicz tweets, “This should be a gigantic story:”

The fired FEMA worker is going down fighting and saying it’s agency policy to skip Trump supporter’s homes, she didn’t come up with it on her own. This should be a gigantic story. https://t.co/l71wziqjDF

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) November 12, 2024

Josh Hawley concurs:

The Homeland Security Committee needs to launch an immediate investigation and call this individual to testify. Under oath. In public. https://t.co/Jax02rRG6X

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 12, 2024

DE-GLEICHSCHALTUNG* IS BEGINNING: Report: Corporate Executives Sit on Boards of Hospitals That Perform Child Sex Changes.

* As Ace warned in February, and likely even more so going forward, it’s time for the establishment left to breakout the airbrushes on a Stalinist level: The Trans-Children Era is About to Be Memory-Holed and the Perpetrators Will Be Disavowing Involvement. Particularly since, as Rich Lowry wrote on Sunday, “Trans Moralism Is Killing the Democrats.” “This is what happened on trans issues in the election. Donald Trump’s ‘she’s for they/them’ attack ad was the most effective and consequential political spot of this century.”

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH MATTHEW YGLESIAS IS A VOICE OF SANITY: A Common Sense Democrat manifesto.

My goal here is to write these principles down at an adequate level of abstraction such that they don’t become a policy laundry list. They’re also not supposed to be a straitjacket. Different people have different views and different priorities, and principles need to be loose enough to accommodate some differences. But I also don’t want these to be total platitudes; I want some people to read them and think, “Fuck this, I don’t agree.” Over the next few weeks, I’ll share posts elaborating on each one individually, but in the meantime, these are the principles I’d like to see the Democratic party embrace:

1. Economic self-interest for the working class includes both robust economic growth and a robust social safety net.

2. The government should prioritize maintaining functional public systems and spaces over tolerating anti-social behavior.

3. Climate change — and pollution more broadly — is a reality to manage, not a hard limit to obey.

4. We should, in fact, judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin, rejecting discrimination and racial profiling without embracing views that elevate anyone’s identity groups over their individuality.

5. Race is a social construct, but biological sex is not. Policy must acknowledge that reality and uphold people’s basic freedom to live as they choose.

6. Academic and nonprofit work does not occupy a unique position of virtue relative to private business or any other jobs.

7. Politeness is a virtue, but obsessive language policing alienates most people and degrades the quality of thinking.

8. Public services and institutions like schools deserve adequate funding, and they must prioritize the interests of their users, not their workforce or abstract ideological projects.

9. All people have equal moral worth, but democratic self-government requires the American government to prioritize the interests of American citizens.

Does he mean it? Yglesias famously tweeted in his younger, more carefree days:

And as John Ekdahl tweeted today, “He’s gonna get utterly obliterated for this, and I can’t wait.” But in any case, “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people,” Milton Friedman once said. “The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”

DAYS OF WINE AND SMUGNESS:

REPORT: Trump picks Kristi Noem to serve as his Homeland Security secretary.

WATCH: Token Republican Scott Jennings Makes CNN Watchable Again.

Jennings was a lonely voice of reason earlier this year, when journalists were still insisting President Joe Biden was fit to serve another four years in office. He slammed Democrats for suggesting that, behind the scenes, they’d seen Biden “do cartwheels and handstands while doing trigonometry while solving all the nation’s problems,” even though “nobody believes that” and most Americans could see that the president “could barely walk up the stairs.” He compared Biden to Colonel Sanders: “His face is on the bucket, he doesn’t make the chicken anymore; in fact, he’s not even alive anymore.”

* * * * * * * *

The Democratic Party’s condescending attitude was a serious problem, Jennings argued. (It was.) He observed that “a lot of men think Democrats care more about dudes who want to become women than dudes who just want to be dudes.”

Jennings deserves enormous credit for making CNN (almost) watchable again. Apart from Donald Trump, he is the best thing that ever happened to the liberal network.

He’s certainly gotten CNN back onto Twitter thanks to his highly clipable soundbites and absolutely unruffled demeanor, and will likely soon host his own show somewhere. But I’m not sure if boosting CNN’s presence on Twitter actually translates into better television rating for the beleaguered news opinion network.