Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

November 21, 2025

KATIE COURIC, SUDDEN CHAMPION OF DISPASSIONATE OBJECTIVITY: Katie Couric claims new owners of CBS, Bari Weiss are ‘compromising independent journalism.’

“These are really perilous times,” Couric said, pointing to what she described as eroding boundaries that once shielded newsrooms from business-side interference.

She recalled her early career at NBC News, where she said executives honored “an unwritten rule that there was a separation of church and state.”

Couric argued that the line has blurred as media companies face political threats, regulatory pressure and aggressive ownership changes.

“This idea that these corporations are putting pressure on their journalists is so repugnant,” she said.

Does Katie Couric not know she’s Katie Couric?

UPDATE: Bari Weiss’s Plans for CBS News: ‘I Wanna Blow This Up.’

Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief at CBS News, is already making waves.

The founder and editor of The Free Press and former New York Times columnist has adopted a rallying cry in meetings with colleagues, according to the Wall Street Journal.: “I wanna blow this up.”

Weiss’s plan “is working to overhaul the organization’s evening news program, counter what she sees as a left-leaning bias in legacy media and make the newsroom operate more efficiently,” reports the Journal.

Paramount Global and its new boss, Dave Ellison, recently acquired CBS in a deal that was harshly criticized by other legacy media outlets.

Katy Couric, the former anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” warned that “the whole setup with the Ellisons bringing her in and buying the Free Press is compromising independent journalism.”

Couric neglected to explain what or who was being “compromised,” but that’s par for the course. The unspoken criticism is that Weiss just isn’t left-wing enough. She’s an anti-woke crusader who wants to get legacy media to take their thumbs off the scale and report the news honestly. She’s no MAGA cheerleader, even though some media critics fear that CBS will now kowtow to Trump.

Alas, “blow this up” means return CBS News to mid-’90s Clintonian levels of liberalism. But even that worldview would likely translate into a major improvement to its news product.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 21st, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE PERMANENT BIPARTISAN FUSION PARTY: Rachel Maddow attending Dick Cheney’s funeral sparks social media frenzy.

Liberal MS NOW host Rachel Maddow went viral Thursday after she was spotted at the funeral of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Maddow, who once called Cheney “the maestro of terror politics,” was seen in the pews of Washington National Cathedral sitting next to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Two seats over was veteran Democratic strategist James Carville.

The image of Maddow appearing at Cheney’s memorial service caught many by surprise.

But it probably shouldn’t have:

More from Ace: The Deposed Regime Gathers to Pretend to Honor Dick Cheney While Actually Making Petty Attacks to Advance Their Dying Political Careers.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 21st, 2025

November 20, 2025

RED DEAD REDEMPTION:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 20th, 2025

NIXON’S THE ONE, NOW MORE THAN EVER! Is This Nixon Redux?

Both Nixon and Trump made taking on the Washington establishment their top domestic policy priority.
‍
Writers and pundits are increasingly comparing Donald Trump to another Republican president who governed several decades ago: Richard Nixon.

In the past, these comparisons would have been offered primarily by President Trump’s detractors. But for many on the right these days, being compared to Richard Nixon is an honor rather than a criticism. As Michael Knowles observed last week in a speech at the Nixon Library, there has been a “major reputational rehabilitation” of Richard Nixon over the past decade among conservatives.

Which is nothing compared to the major reputational rehabilitation Nixon already received from the left, to bash a prior generation of Republican presidents.

(After he leaves office, Trump will receive his own reputational upgrade from the left to similarly bash future Republican presidents, which will be hysterical to watch.)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 20th, 2025

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH THE GENDER CULT:  Never Forget What They Stood For: The Left Enters the ‘Feigned Ignorance’ Phase of Gender Cultism.

[Patton] Oswalt and Reid are just two examples, but we are going to see a LOT more of this from others on the left, both in media and in politics.

We must not let them get away with it.

Oswalt’s tweet history includes making jokes about NAMBLA, and Reid (before she was fired) accused opposing the mutilation and sterilization of children to Nazi Germany — because, of course, she did.

Not only that, but a couple of years ago, Reid infamously declared the simple question, ‘What is a woman?’ to be a right-wing conspiracy.

And from last year: MSNBC’s Joy Reid defends underage gay porn for children… but posted homophobic blogs.

Are we sure she did all that, or were all these clips and links planted by her now-legendary homophobic time-traveling hackers?

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 20th, 2025

JUST DON’T MENTION THE WAR (ON STANDARDS):

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 20th, 2025

HOLIDAYS IN HELL: Should We Vacation at Port-au-Prince or Chicago?

These days, it’s pretty much a coin-flip:

 

 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 20th, 2025

November 19, 2025

WORST. HITLER. EVER: Judge Blocks Trump From Power-Washing Office Building Near White House.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I posted this from John Lucas earlier on my post about this: “This federal judge did not block anything or make any ruling on an injunction. The plaintiff requested an injunction and the government then filed an affidavit saying that they did not intend to take any action until December 31. The judge then simply entered a minute order that established a briefing schedule, based upon the government filing. That’s it: no ruling on the merits.”

Here at InstaPundit we don’t promise not to make mistakes, only to fix them when we find out.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 19th, 2025

THE ZINN PROTOCOLS:

With the exception of Noam Chomsky, perhaps no intellectual has been more influential on today’s American neo-communists and radical progressives than Howard Zinn. The far-left academic, who died in 2010, literally wrote the book on the left’s revisionist history of the United States.

With his A People’s History of the United States, a bestseller thanks to generations of academics forcing their students to buy it, Zinn outlined a comprehensive vision of this history—likely drawn from Stalinist propaganda—that portrays the United States as a conspiratorial fraud got up by white racists and rapacious capitalists.

The conspirators, Zinn claims again and again over hundreds of pages, brutally exploit the American people, who are too duped or stupid to realize the truth of their plight. Thankfully, Zinn is there to enlighten them.

It is impossible to overestimate the power this vision exercises over today’s radical left. They have effectively adopted Zinn’s claims wholesale without the slightest question. Zinn’s influence is palpable in the tearing down of statues, demonization of the US as a racist and genocidal entity, and even “mainstream” efforts like the New York Times’ 1619 Project. If the radical left has a vision of what the US is, it is Zinn’s vision.

Katie Couric is apparently a fan, not surprisingly: Couric and Ken Burns Lament Left’s Declining Influence In History Education.

One of the bigger criticisms of PragerU appears to be a video where a cartoon version of Christopher Columbus says slavery is better than death in a conversation with time-travelling children from the present day. PragerU has defended itself by saying that is simply what the real Columbus would have believed. Indeed, one of the child characters immediately follows up by debating Columbus and telling him that slavery was “evil.”

Nevertheless, Couric rolled on, “And I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on this reversion to a brand of history that is not factually accurate, that presents American history, you know, through rose-colored glasses and gives the impression that Americans never did anything wrong.”

She also stated that, “Howard Zinn kind of tried to turn it on, turn this on its head with, you know, talking about history from the point of view of the oppressed instead of the oppressor, but it seems like we’ve made so many strides in giving a more inclusive and a more accurate view of our history, and now we’re going backwards, and it’s so frustrating to me, and as a historian, I can only imagine how you feel.”

Couric tried caricaturizing conservatives by claiming we don’t believe anything bad ever happened in American history, yet she was promoting someone who thinks nothing good ever happened.

For his part, Burns accepted Couric’s dishonest framing of the conservative perspective, “Yeah, it’s terrible and it happens. It’s the course of human events. You go forward, you go back, and yes, it’s simple. It’s in an autocrat’s interest to want to simplify this story and make it only one thing, but it’s, you can’t do that.”

Dennis Prager, “autocrat.”

Oh, and speaking of Couric: Katie Couric faces mounting criticism for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein at his private dinner with Prince Andrew AFTER pedophile was convicted.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 19th, 2025

IT’S COME TO THIS: Female reporter who slammed Hollywood for thinking female reporters sleep with sources accused of sleeping with sources.

If you don’t follow the professional journalism class, you might not know how funny this is.

Possibly a few; read the whole thing. But then, perhaps Nuzzi is having second thoughts about the profession she stumbled into when that whole pop star thing went bust: Olivia Nuzzi, teen-pop sensation.

Rather than envisioning who sent pictures of what to whom, or getting jealous of a brainworm, Cockburn has found himself nostalgic. He’s casting his mind back to 2009, back when Nuzzi sought attention in a more innocent fashion: as an aspiring teen-pop starlet. Her MySpace page showcasing her singing talents as “Livvy” has unfortunately been deleted, but one enthusiast archived it so fans can at least see what it looked like.

“Livvy is a sixteen year old singer, songwriter and actress,” the page reads. “A former Wilhelmina model, she has appeared in various commercials, films, television programs and print ads since her start in the business at the age of five.” A child star… she never stood a chance.

The page begins with Nuzzi’s trademark modesty:

The day that Madonna released “Erotica”
The day that Andy Warhol made his first film
The day that Freddie Mercury sang his last note
The day that Judy Garland conceived Liza Minnelli
The day that Britney Spears told you to hit it one more time
The day that Cher first met a sequin
The day that Candy Darling took her last breath
The day that Mick Jagger first strut across a stage
The day that Pamela Anderson was introduced to silicone
The day that David Bowie sang “Lady Stardust”
The day that Michael Jackson first slipped on a white glove
… was the day that Livvy was born

Audio of one her recordings can be heard here — if you dare: “Nuzzi wrote a song called ‘Jailbait’ and it’s about what you think it’s about.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 19th, 2025

THIS IS CNN: Scott Jennings Makes the Most Scott Jennings Face EVER As CNN Panelist Makes Epstein Files About Racism. “You can literally turn the volume down and just by watching Jennings’ face, you can tell when something exceptionally embarrassing and ignorant is being said. Which is basically every night on CNN. Case in point, this back and forth about Epstein, Trump … and racism. No, really.”

Posted at 1:50 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 19th, 2025

I’M PRETTY SURE JOHN FRANKENHEIMER INTENDED SEVEN DAYS IN MAY TO BE A WARNING, NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE: Call It Insurrection.

Democrats have committed many outrages in their war against Donald Trump, and indeed against Republicans, going back to the time when Obama’s intelligence community began spying against media figures and the United States Senate.

Few people seem to recall that the CIA was spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee as it investigated abuses, or that it bugged the phone of James Rosen and hacked Sharyl Attkisson’s laptop. There were so many abuses during Trump’s term, up to and including lying to the FISA court to illegally spy on Trump’s associates, leaking false information to the media, and #resist lawful orders of the president.

Remember all those stories celebrating the #resistance?

For me, among all the evil things done that undermined our Republic, perhaps the worst betrayal was General Mark Milley’s admission that he collaborated with the Chinese, promising to inform them of any moves President Trump made that might threaten them.

When Democrats talk about “democracy,” they simply mean rule by the Democrats.

This latest video from Democrats encouraging intelligence and military officials to disobey orders with which they disagree is an extension of this principle.

Related:

Flashback: Glenn’s 2016 paper on military coups in the United States.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 19th, 2025

November 18, 2025

VDH: Reality Caught Up to ‘Climate Change.’ “For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned:”

Question whether man-made global warming was truly responsible for increased temperatures rather than natural, often centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling of the planet, and one was labeled a climate crank.

Everything from declining fertility to forest fires was ridiculously attributed to climate change.

But the causes of both demographic crises and charred landscapes were more likely the result of new affluent lifestyles that saw child-rearing as too expensive and time-consuming, and misguided forest policies or underfunded firefighting.

Yet reality has caught up with the near-religious climate change cult.

One, the left-wing tech billionaires—exemplified by former climate change zealot Bill Gates—have become apostates of the green movement. Now they do not warn of a planet threatened by too much man-made heat but rather by too little man-made kilowattage.

They believe artificial intelligence will prove as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. But to win the AI revolution will require vast increases in electricity production, of up to a staggering 100 gigawatts a year of additional capacity.

Such enormous demand—to build the equivalent of a hundred huge power plants per year—is far beyond the ability of “renewables” alone.

Instead, the only solution is an “all of the above” strategy of building more nuclear, natural gas, clean-coal, wind, and solar generation plants.

How much more advanced would American nuclear technology be today if it wasn’t for the Luddite rockers who pounded the stage during the 1979 “No Nukes” concerts? From ‘No Nukes’ to Nuclear Now: The progressive energy flip.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 18th, 2025

MAMDANI-ENDORSEE FINDS IT REPREHENSIBLE TO APOLOGIZE FOR ‘A TERROR ATTACK THAT A COUPLE PEOPLE DID:’

Remember back in 2022 when Rep. Ilhan Omar was speaking to a gathering of CAIR and referred to 9/11 as the day that “some people did something”? Now, a woman whom New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, whose father’s second cousin was afraid to wear a hijab on the subway because of that something, has endorsed for the New York State Assembly a woman who describes 9/11 as “a terror attack that a couple people did.” We wonder 1) how old she was on September 11, 2001, and 2) what university she graduated from, because she hits all the talking points: capitalism, racism, white supremacy, colonialism, etc. And why should anyone apologize for 9/11 when America and the West haven’t apologized for all of the genocides they’ve caused?

Good and hard, Fun City:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 18th, 2025

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: Zohran Mamdani Just Declared NYC a City of…What?

Mamdani declares New York “is a city of international law,” and as such, “he will do whatever he can to enforce the international arrest warrant against PM Netanyahu if he visits New York, even if it is during a visit to the UN General Assembly.”

As Hugo Timms writes at Spiked, “The theatre kids are threatening to run the show now. We better get ready for more second-rate scripts.”

Even Bill Maher can figure out where this is headed: Socialism ‘will f**k you:’ Bill Maher warns Democrats the radical left is leading party to ruin.

UPDATE:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 18th, 2025

JUDGEMENT OF NUREMBERG: The film Nuremberg is almost unforgivable.

● The sub-Dynasty style soap dialogue. For example: ‘Ah’m gonna put Hermann Goering on the stand and ah’m gonna make him tell the world what he did!’ A story like this, ideally, demands a respect for the facts, a verbatim approach where possible and a sober, low-key dynamic. The more you amp it up, the more grotesque it potentially becomes.

● The heavy handed MAGA references. Near the end of the film someone says – or rather shouts – something like: ‘EVIL DOESN’T HAVE TO WEAR A UNIFORM FOR YOU TO KNOW IT’S EVIL!’ Yes, Trump has his flaws. But comparing his administration with the Third Reich is, as even his enemies would surely acknowledge, moronically reductive.

● The ‘Allo ‘Allo! style accents. (E.g. Goering: ‘I em going to es-cape zee hengmen’s noose!’ If only the director had followed the example of Kenneth Branagh’s Conspiracy, about the 1942 Wannsee conference, when Nazi officials discussed details of the Final Solution. Branagh, wisely, told the actors to use English accents as he feared that giving it loads of ‘zis’ and ‘zat’ would be distracting. As a result the film worked well. It became relatable, bureaucratic and, as Hannah Arendt might have said, chillingly banal.

Speaking of Kenneth Branagh’s Conspiracy, that made-for-HBO movie, shot during the election year of 2000, has a line early in its run time, when the actor playing Nazi undersecretary Martin Luther says, “Where will we be in four years, do you think? Living in the White House?” Plus ça change.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 18th, 2025

WORST. HITLER. EVER:

As for being the first “authoritarian” in history to reduce the size of government, Calvin Coolidge would like a word here: In his 1944 State of the Union address, FDR smeared the laissez–faire Coolidge era of the 1920s as “the spirit of fascism.”

FDR ended that speech with one of the most disgusting exhortations against his political foes — and liberty itself — ever offered by an American president in a major address. He said, in part:

One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920′s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.

Ah yes, if we go back to the 1920s, an era of rampant prosperity and expanding liberty we will have surrendered to Fascism. That is grotesque.

But it’s a grotesquerie that refuses to die. Which seems odd; as Charles Cooke asked the left during the 2016 election, “Has Donald Trump’s remarkable rise done anything to change your mind as to the ideal strength of the State?”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 18th, 2025
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