Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr joins the NewsBusters Podcast to discuss protecting free speech over the airwaves and online, the future of broadcast licenses, and Operation Clean Carts—his push to block fraudulent Chinese hardware from infiltrating U.S. networks. David Bozell asks about the FCC's "public interest" standard for broadcast TV affiliates.  At a time when the latest Gallup poll showed an all-time low in trust in the media -- only 28 percent have at least "a fair amount" of trust, while 70 percent said little or no trust -- is it time for a more energetic FCC to question if all this broadcast bias is in the public interest? Carr told Bozell the poll shows "More Americans have trust in gas station sushi than they do in legacy mainstream media. And it’s a problem of the media’s own making." CARR: The legacy mainstream media missed some of the most important stories of the last five or ten years. Hunter Biden laptop story, gone. Covid origins, total miss. Whips at the border – remember that story? There were all these stories about emergency rooms in the Midwest being shut down from Ivermectin overdoses. It ended up being complete hoaxes, not true. Covington Catholic [Nicholas Sandmann], you go down the line. Jussie Smollett. Major, major important stories. The reason why this news media should exist, and they’re 180 [degrees] wrong on it. So I think it’s a massive indictment on themselves. While President Trump has talked about pulling licenses for broadcast TV stations, it's a complicated process with hearings. It hasn't been done in decades -- although Carr pointed out that the Left wanted to start that process for broadcast stations owned by Sinclair, charging that they had a right-wing bias. In 2023, leftists pushed a petition seeking to revoke the broadcast license of the Fox-owned affiliate in Philadelphia over its parent company's "promotion of falsehoods about fraud in the 2020 election." The FCC denied it last year. Watch the podcast below, or on YouTube or Rumble. The audio is here.   

The trend of the late night hosts devolving from comedians into DNC talking heads continued on Monday as they gushed over the weekend’s No Kings protestors. According to them, the size of the crowds should discredit the idea they were actually quite radical. On The Late Show, CBS’s Stephen Colbert excitedly wondered, “Do you feel that? Do you feel the vibe? It's electric in here. You can feel the energy in this room because these folks are still high from the No Kings rally this weekend. That was beautiful! It’s a beautiful sight to see. On Saturday, 7 million people turned out in over 2,700 events in all 50 states.”      Colbert also tried painting the protests as mainstream, “Of course the far-left loons were all out 'n proud in the bastions of liberal anarchy: Lee's Summit, Missouri. Sarasota, Florida. Plano, Texas. Mount Vernon, Iowa, Leesburg, Virginia. And Idaho Pocatello, Idaho. Even the people in Idaho turned out to tell Trump ‘No, you da ho.’” Fact-check: Lee’s Summit, Mount Vernon, and Leesburg are all in blue counties, while Pocatello is a college town. Meanwhile, Late Night host Seth Meyers also used his NBC show to promote crowd sizes, “By the way, I can’t help but compare the size of the No Kings rallies to the size of the right-wing Tea Party protests back in 2009, which were much smaller but commanded an obsessive amount of media attention.” After a montage of news clips from 2009 and 2010, Meyers continued, “Several hundred thousand Tea Party protesters compared to 7 million at No Kings rallies… It's worth keeping the comparison between the two rallies in mind just to put in perspective how unprecedented these anti-Trump protests have been. So, naturally, Trump has responded by choosing to lie about them.”     On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Monday host Jon Stewart tried to suggest that GOP claims the rallies would be full of radicals were nonsense, “What the? Not the hardest core! I expected partial Marxism and hardcore, but not full display hardest-core ha-Marxism!…And so this weekend, we sat in our bunkers, doors locked, windows boarded, muskets and cyanide pills at the ready, prepared for whatever the hardest core had in store. Do your worst, display your max—Marxism to its fullest!” It is a fact that the Communist Party USA was a co-sponsor of the New York City rally. Still, after a clip of protestors singing “This Land Is Your Land,” Stewart sarcastically mourned, “No! Not public domain folk classics, you monsters! Actually, it was kind of an incredible turnout that was somewhat inspiring.” He further added, “Seven million Americans, zero mass shootings. Zero. That's just sad. No mass shootings? My god. Has that happened before? Even the dog parade had some nipping. It wasn't a hate America rally at all! I look forward to Republicans apologizing sincerely for implying that these Americans were what's the word I'm looking for? Deplorable.” Later, Stewart welcomed Sen. Bernie Sanders to the show and asked him, “First of all, thank you for being here. How were these No Kings rallies? You went, you addressed one. Where did you speak?” Sanders answered that he was in D.C. and hyped, “There were some 7 million people out and 2,600 events all over the country, not only in big cities, but in small towns. Bottom line: extraordinary. People came out and said no to Trumpism, no to authoritarianism, no to oligarchy.”     One of the other speakers at the D.C. rally was a Hamas apologist, but Stewart wasn’t interested in that. Instead, he heaped more praise on his guest, “And it grew from the previous expression of those, and obviously, you can go back and say, ‘Well, you know, maybe the left is building a similar thing to the Tea Party.’ With all of this potential energy that is moving in that direction, how do you harness that for purpose, for being directional? There are not a lot of people out there other than yourself, other than Representative Cortez, who are very clearly delineated about a point of view that people can rally behind.” Sanders freaked out that, “We are in an extraordinarily dangerous time, as you know. You have an authoritarian president who wants more and more power, doesn't respect the Constitution, doesn’t respect the law… You've got a Republican Party that is in lockstep, kind of a cult of the individual. We've got to stop him.” If a Tea Party rally had one distasteful sign, liberals would use that to smear the entire movement, but nobody in the media, comedians included, cares that a rally in New York was sponsored by the CPUSA or that the one in D.C. had a Hamas-supporting speaker.  Here are transcripts for the October 20-taped show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 10/20/2025 11:37 PM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: Do you feel that? Do you feel the vibe? It's electric in here. You can feel the energy in this room because these folks are still high from the No Kings rally this weekend. That was beautiful! It’s a beautiful sight to see. On Saturday, 7 million people turned out in over 2,700 events in all 50 states. There were absolutely massive crowds in Chicago, Illinois, in Los Angeles, in Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and right here in New York, New York.  You know, we know -- you know New Yorkers are pissed when they voluntarily come to Times Square on a weekend. Rub elbows with the Elmos. Of course the far-left loons were all out 'n proud in the bastions of liberal anarchy: Lee's Summit, Missouri. Sarasota, Florida. Plano, Texas. Mount Vernon, Iowa, Leesburg, Virginia. And Idaho Pocatello, Idaho. Even the people in Idaho turned out to tell Trump "No, you da ho."  Thank you, thank you, thank you. Peabody, please.  *** NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers 10/20/2025 12:47 AM ET SETH MEYERS: By the way, I can’t help but compare the size of the No Kings rallies to the size of the right-wing Tea Party protests back in 2009, which were much smaller but commanded an obsessive amount of media attention. LOCAL NEWS REPORTER [9/12/09]: New at 6:00, protesting the president, taxes, and health care reform. The TEA Party, which stands for "Taxed enough already" has been traveling across the country calling for smaller government and reduced taxes. REPORTER [7/4/09]: Thousands of activists held rallies in cities across the country, protesting big government and big government spending. Similar so-called Tea Parties sprang up around the country last April to blast the economic stimulus package, a movement championed by high-profile conservatives. REPORTER 2 [1/27/10]: Best guess was that several hundred thousand participated in one or more of the protests last year. MEYERS: Several hundred thousand Tea Party protesters compared to 7 million at No Kings rallies. And worst of all, they didn't even have a naked bike ride. The closest they got was one guy in a tricorn hat and a speedo. Also, tricorn hats and speedos weren't around at the same time. Sorry to be an ass[bleep] about it, but I can't stand historical anachronisms. It's worth keeping the comparison between the two rallies in mind just to put in perspective how unprecedented these anti-Trump protests have been. So, naturally, Trump has responded by choosing to lie about them. *** Comedy Central The Daily Show 10/20/2025 11:02 PM ET JON STEWART: What the? Not the hardest core! I expected partial Marxism and hardcore, but not full display hardest core ha-Marxism! It was going to be like Mad Max out there with Chuck Schumer on flaming guitar! That’s a real photograph. And so this weekend, we sat in our bunkers, doors locked, windows boarded, muskets and cyanide pills at the ready, prepared for whatever the hardest-core had in store. Do your worst, display your max—Marxism to its fullest! ANDREW DYMBURT: An estimated 7 million people gathered across some 2,700 no kings rallies and cities from coast to coast and what is being described as the largest single day demonstration in U.S. history. ROSEMARY CHURCH: Not only were they largely peaceful, they were often joyful. PROTESTORS: This land is my land, from California to the New York Island. STEWART: No! Not public domain folk classics, you monsters! Actually, it was kind of an incredible turnout that was somewhat inspiring. Seven million Americans, zero mass shootings. Zero. That's just sad. No mass shootings? My god. Has that happened before? Even the dog parade had some nipping. It wasn't a hate America rally at all! I look forward to Republicans apologizing sincerely for implying that these Americans were what's the word I'm looking for? Deplorable. … STEWART: First of all, thank you for being here. How were these No Kings rallies? You went, you addressed one. Where did you speak? BERNIE SANDERS: I was in D.C. There was some 200,000 people out in D.C. There were some 7 million people out and 2,600 events all over the country, not only in big cities, but in small towns. Bottom line: extraordinary. People came out and said no to Trumpism, no to authoritarianism, no to oligarchy. STEWART: And it grew from the previous expression of those, and obviously, you can go back and say, “Well, you know, maybe the left is building a similar thing to the Tea Party.” With all of this potential energy that is moving in that direction, how do you harness that for purpose, for being directional? There are not a lot of people out there other than yourself, other than Representative Cortez, who are very clearly delineated about a point of view that people can rally behind. SANDERS: Well, let me just say two things. We are in an extraordinarily dangerous time, as you know. You have an authoritarian president who wants more and more power, doesn't respect the Constitution, doesn’t respect the law. STEWART: Well, a Supreme Court that’s granting it to him. SANDERS: Right. That’s true. I mean, that’s part of the process. You've got a Republican Party that is in lockstep, kind of a cult of the individual. We've got to stop him. 

On Tuesday, October 14, the cast of ABC’s The View whined on-air that Republicans didn’t want to come on the program to talk with them. According to co-host Joy Behar, Republicans were “afraid of us.” But after a clip of Behar’s suggestion went viral, Republicans and conservatives began to call out The View for repeatedly turning down their requests to appear on the show. “I was going to say that I think we should have more Republicans on the show, but they don’t want to come on. They're scared of us. It’s like Marjorie Taylor Greene says that she finds the Republican men afraid of powerful women,” Behar declared.     But it seemed as though The View was afraid of having a strong conservative woman on the show. “When I was pitched to go on, they said no lol,” quipped Riley Gaines on X. Gaines, an advocate for protecting women’s sports from transgendered males pretending to be women, would be a great counterbalance since The View advocates for men in women’s sports.     Danielle Alverez, senior advisor for the Republican National Committee, sounded a “Fake News Alert” on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds (R-FL), in her own X post. “@ByronDonalds has offered to join @TheView but the show has declined,” she wrote. “@JoyVBehar should have checked with her team before making the ridiculous claim ‘[Republicans] are scared of us.’” Adding: “Offer still stands! Will you accept?” Donalds himself also reaffirmed his offer: “Hey @TheView, my offer still stands. I’m ready when you are!”     Clay Travis, syndicated radio host and the founder of OutKick, shared a screenshot of his team’s e-mail request to the show’s producers, which read: Conservative radio hosts Clay and Buck would like to pitch themselves as guests on The View. They often play clips from the program on their nationally syndicated radio show (granted, as a means to refute them) and thought a sit-down would be productive for both audiences since they come from two completely different perspectives. “Hey @JoyVBehar here is our producer Ali emailing The View last July offering for us to come on as guests. We’re big fans. Look forward to the invite!” Travis wrote on X.     Joel Pollak, the editor-at-large for Breitbart News, said on X that it was like pulling teeth to get invited in 2017 with the producers really having to work to convince the liberal hosts to allow him on. And they refused his subsequent requests: This is a lie by @JoyVBehar. When I was invited onto @TheView in 2017, producers told me they had to work hard to convince the show to invite a conservative. The appearance went well, and I reached out several times for a return visit. They declined. They are afraid of dialogue.     In 2023, NewsBusters exclusively reported that The View rejected Senator Cruz’s request to appear on the show as part of his tour to promote his book at the time. Cruz’s team reached out to the producers three times and were denied every time. According to a response e-mail, they were “not able to make an offer at this time, but will definitely be in touch if anything changes.” Even NewsBusters had made public overtures for our editors and analysts to go on the show and have a little chat with the liberal ladies about their liberally biased content. Many of us here would leap at the opportunity. Maybe even one of them could appear on the NewsBusters Podcast. The Media Research Center and NewsBusters even sent a formal request to The View's producers on Monday October 20; offering up our President David Bozell and a few of our editors, including this author, as possible guests. As of the posting of this piece, we have not heard back from them. We'll update this piece if we hear back from them. It’s not like The View was unfamiliar with NewsBusters. They kvetched about a study we put out counting their legal notes. The View has since stopped issuing legal notes. In April 2024, The View’s executive producer, Brian Teta told Deadline that they had stopped asking President Trump to appear on the show and that “we’re not going to put people on there to [spread] misinformation.” A laughable concept given the current nature of the show. And despite multiple conservative organizations calling The View's bluff and flooding them with requests to appear on the show, the show's ticket request page 1iota doesn't show any conservative guests as of Monday (see below).

The story that modernity tells itself is one of technological progress. We have told this story for so long, with such unwavering conviction, that we have forgotten it has an author. When the Nobel committee awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics to Joel Mokyr, they were not merely recognizing a historian. They were footnoting the author of our prevailing narrative, a 17th-century English statesman who never invented a single device, but who successfully marketed ideas so potent that they would remake the world in their image. The story of our prosperity, Mokyr insists, begins with Francis Bacon.It begins, more precisely, with a frontispiece. The engraving on Bacon’s 1620 "Novum Organum" depicts a ship sailing past the Pillars of Hercules, venturing out from the known world into an uncharted ocean. The motto beneath, “Many will travel and knowledge will be increased,” was not only a prediction but an exhortation. Before Bacon, knowledge was largely a matter of contemplation and study of classical authorities. He saw these as dead ends. Knowledge, he declared, ought to bear fruit in production. Its purpose was not merely to understand the world but to gain “dominion over creation” for the “relief of man’s estate.” Ipsa scientia potestas est. Knowledge itself is power.This created the feedback loop that defines modernity: Scientific theory leads to new technology, and new technical problems spur further scientific inquiry.This was the core of what Mokyr calls the “Baconian program”: a philosophical revolution that reframed humanity’s relationship with nature. Nature was no longer a given order to be accepted, but a set of secrets to be extracted, a force to be subdued. Bacon spoke of putting nature “on the rack” to force her to confess her laws. The goal was utility. The method was to marry the rational and the empirical, to unite the philosopher in his study with the craftsman in his workshop. In "The New Atlantis," he imagined a research institute called “Salomon’s House,” dedicated to inventing things. He was, in Mokyr’s description, a “cultural entrepreneur,” and the product he was selling was a particular vision of the future.This product sold remarkably well. From the mid-17th through the 18th century, the Baconian program became the organizing principle of the European intellectual elite. The Royal Society of London, founded in 1660, adopted Bacon as its patron. Its members were not to take anyone’s word for the truth; they were to experiment and measure instead. Across the continent, a network of thinkers in the “Republic of Letters” spread the gospel of useful knowledge through correspondence and journals. The monumental French "Encyclopédie" was a direct descendant, an audacious attempt to catalog and disseminate all practical human knowledge, from mining techniques to political theory. The very idea that sharing knowledge leads to progress became an article of faith. This was the “Industrial Enlightenment,” a culture that not only hoped for improvement but actively engineered it.RELATED: God made man in His image — will 'faith tech' flip the script? Photo by NurPhoto/Getty ImagesThe Industrial Revolution, in Mokyr’s telling, was not an accident of capital or coal. It was an intellectual achievement, the consequence of this cultural rewiring. James Watt did not improve the steam engine in a vacuum. He was a product of a new culture, a skilled mechanic familiar with the latest scientific theories on heat and pressure. His separate condenser was not a feat of solitary genius, but a manifestation of Bacon’s call to unite “know-why” with “know-how.” This created the feedback loop that defines modernity: Scientific theory leads to new technology, and new technical problems spur further scientific inquiry. The economic growth that followed was not just an increase; it was a phase change. It became sustained and exponential because of the cultural engine continuously driving it.America inherited this engine and supercharged it. Benjamin Franklin was the archetypal home-grown Baconian, an inventor and scientist celebrated for his practical ingenuity. The nation’s founding ethos was steeped in the promise of both geographical and scientific frontiers. The 20th century saw the program institutionalized on a massive scale. Vannevar Bush, persuading the government to fund basic research after World War II, called science “the endless frontier,” an echo of Bacon’s ship sailing into the unknown. The Manhattan Project, the moon landing, the invention of the microchip — these were all expensive, elaborate vindications of a 400-year-old premise. The smartphone in your pocket is a Salomon’s House in miniature, a device built on centuries of accumulated knowledge, from quantum mechanics to materials science, all marshaled for the purpose of utility.And yet one is left to wonder about the price of this story. The Baconian program gave us the power to relieve our estate, but it did so by teaching us to view nature as a resource to be exploited, a standing reserve for our own declared needs. The instrumentalism that gave us vaccines and the internet also gave us a world where we have become alienated from the very ground on which we stand. Bacon’s faith in progress was infectious, but it sidelined other ways of being, other stories that valued contentment over control, harmony over dominion. Mokyr’s great contribution is to show us that the modern economy is not a force of nature, but the result of a choice made long ago. He reminds us that the contemporary world we inhabit was first imagined. We live inside a 17th-century dream.

A man stole a car from a gas station in Cocoa, Florida, last Tuesday with a 1-year-old child in the back seat — and then seconds later returned the vehicle and apologized to the mother, police said.William Mullis, 53, is seen on surveillance video outside a Sunoco station off U.S. Highway 1 walking toward the victim’s car, WESH-TV reported, citing an arrest affidavit.'In this case, she’s very lucky that this guy saw there was a child in the back seat, got a case of remorse, and decided to drive back and give her her car back with her child in it.'Mullis drove toward the gas station exit, made a right turn on Highway 1 — but seconds later backed up, re-entered the gas station area, and parked in a space in front of the gas station store, WESH said.The mother of the 1-year-old child ran out of the gas station store and confronted Mullis, WESH said, adding that the mother told investigators Mullis said he wouldn't have stolen the car had he known a baby was inside.Mullis then apologized to her and left the area on foot, the station said. “I’m sure this is a parent’s worst nightmare,” Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Tod Goodyear told WESH. “In this case, she’s very lucky that this guy saw there was a child in the back seat, got a case of remorse, and decided to drive back and give her her car back with her child in it.”More from WESH:Under Florida law, it is illegal for a parent or anyone responsible for a child younger than 6 unattended in a vehicle for more than 15 minutes. The vehicle can't be running, and the child may not be left alone if their health is in danger or they are in distress.Goodyear said it appears the child was inside the car for only a few minutes. The mother is not facing any charges at this time.“I have three kids. I have four grandkids, and it’s a pain to take the kids out of the car when you’re going in for just a short period of time,” Goodyear added to WESH. “But this kind of reinforces you never know what’s gonna happen. You never know who’s watching you.” Mullis was arrested and booked into the Brevard County Jail for grand theft of a motor vehicle and kidnapping/confinement of a child under 13 years old, WOFL-TV reported, citing jail records and the arrest affidavit. Jail records indicated Mullis was still behind bars Tuesday morning. WESH said he's being held without bond, and his next court date is in early November.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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