Column science fiction film The Abyss: The Nuts-and-Bolts Approach to High-Pressure First Contact A tense, thrilling survival story — plus aliens! By Kali Wallace | Published on March 5, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The Abyss (1989). Written and directed by James Cameron. Starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. Back in the 1970s, the energy company Duke Power began constructing a nuclear power plant outside of Gaffney, South Carolina. The Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant was never completed; of the three planned reactors, only one was partially finished by the time construction stopped in the early ’80s. The unfinished reactor sat around for a few years until the property was purchased by an unlikely new owner: Earl Owensby (E.O.) Studios, which planned to convert the site into a film and television studio. That’s not exactly what ended up happening. E.O. Studios did find somebody who wanted to make a movie at the site, but only one film would ever be made at the abandoned Cherokee plant. And it was a film with some very peculiar filming requirements… the sort of requirements that would never be replicated because, in all honestly, nobody else would be crazy enough try. I read a lot of wild film production stories while researching movies for this column, but I don’t think any of them have made me stop and think, “I’m sorry, you did what?” more than James Cameron’s The Abyss. I guess I have always sort of known, in the back of my mind, that this movie had some bonkers production lore, but I think it’s subsequently been overshadowed by the bonkers production lore from Cameron’s Titanic (1997). Sure, the Titanic production was bigger and messier and more expensive and also involved the cast and crew being hospitalized after eating lobster chowder laced with PCP. But I genuinely think the production of The Abyss was more outrageous, because an estimated 40% of the principal photography took place underwater. To be clear, that doesn’t mean special effects sequences, miniatures and models, or green screen backgrounds against which dry actors would perform. That means principal photography. The sets were underwater. The actors were underwater. The director, director of photography (Mikael Salomon), an underwater supervisor (Al Giddings), camera operators, assistants, and other members of the crew were underwater at depths below 50 feet for five hours at a time; they had to refill their air tanks during the shift and decompress for hours afterward. Also, that scene of the rat breathing liquid? That was real. Let’s back up a little. Cameron wrote the first version of the story that would evolve into The Abyss when he was a teenager. He attended a lecture about experiments around trying to make it possible for humans to breathe incompressible liquid instead of air. (Liquid breathing is still an ongoing area of research with potential applications far beyond diving—such as in neonatal pediatrics—but it started back in the ’60s with the experiments of the U.S. Office of Naval Research.) That was the start of Cameron’s lifelong fascination with deep sea exploration; you probably remember that in 2012 Cameron piloted a submersible to the deepest point in the world’s oceans. But before all of that, back when he was just a Canadian teenager, he wrote a short story about a group of people studying the ocean depths. Cameron kept that story in the back of his mind when he went to Hollywood. He started out working on visual effects—he made the matte paintings in Escape From New York (1981)—before he started directing movies. Cameron’s directorial feature debut came about when he was brought on mid-production to take over the 1982 horror movie Piranha II: The Spawning, a film about murderous piranhas who have learned how to fly. It is apparently so bad Cameron refuses to count it as his first film. I have not seen it so I’ll take his word for it, but I think everybody should watch the trailer, for our communal edification. Luckily for him—and for all movie lovers—Cameron’s second and third feature films were a little bit better. With producer Gale Anne Hurd, Cameron made The Terminator (1984) (which Hurd and Cameron also co-wrote), then they made Aliens (1986), a killer one-two punch of incredible cinema that very much made up for the flying piranhas. The Terminator was quite successful upon release, but Aliens was a true smash hit, which means that when Cameron and Hurd were thinking about their third film, they were pretty much able to do what they wanted. And what they wanted was to dunk a bunch of people in a giant tank in an abandoned nuclear power plant. That’s how we got The Abyss. I don’t think I’m going out on any critical limbs when I say that The Abyss is not exactly the most profound sci fi movie in the world. The aliens look pretty cool, thanks to the work of visual effects supervisor John Bruno and his team, as well as the work of Dennis Muren and the folks at Industrial Light & Magic, who put together the computer animation sequence with that watery tentacle. But in terms of their narrative role, the aliens aren’t terribly interesting. Cameron said he wanted to tell a story with nicer aliens than the ones in Aliens, but we’ve seen that sort of shimmery benevolence done before and better in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The special edition director’s cut expands the role of the aliens, as well as adding a great deal more Cold War tension and global peril in the form of enormous tsunami, but the additional visuals and minutes don’t really add any depth. (No pun intended.) The build-up to the aliens works pretty well, but both versions flounder at the end, with the reveal and deus ex machina, partly because the solution is very abrupt, and partly because the everything’s-all-right-now ending doesn’t really match the gritty tone of the rest of the movie. I don’t really mind a flimsy final ten minutes, though. I still enjoy this movie quite a lot, mostly because I think the aliens are irrelevant. In fact, I think the external stakes of the plot are largely irrelevant. All of the drama, all of the tension, all of the narrative twists, everything that matters happens under the water—which is exactly how it should be for a disaster film setting defined by extreme isolation and inhospitable conditions. It may be dressed up in first contact trappings, but the real core of the story is a very different old school sci fi plot: We Have To Survive In This Impossible Place, But We Have A Problem. Again, that’s not a knock against The Abyss. That’s exactly what I like about this movie! I like that it’s a simple survival story told in a straightforward manner, and it saves all of its complexity and movie magic for the mechanics of the production. It was an absolutely outlandish choice to decide to make an underwater film and not fake it—but that’s exactly what Cameron did. Cameron and Hurd were making The Abyss during a weird little Hollywood epoch in which several underwater movies were produced, but many of them were fairly terrible, so it wasn’t like there was any guaranteed audience or success. (John McTiernan’s The Hunt For Red October was in production around the same time, but would come out in 1990.) And there certainly wasn’t an expectation or precedent for filming an underwater movie actually underwater. From the various interviews and articles that came out at the time, it seems like the crew did have some idea what they were getting into before they started, although the cast perhaps did not. The cast, by the way, absolutely hated making this film. That was so widely reported at the time there were even rumors that Ed Harris wouldn’t participate in promotions—which were incorrect, he did promote the film, but he and the rest of the cast also talked at great length about how painful the whole process was. That brings us back to the abandoned Cherokee nuclear power plant. The film production used two enormous tanks on the site. The smaller of the two, a turbine pit, was used mostly for filming the exterior shots of late, lamented USS Montana. But most of the principal photography took place in the would-be reactor’s containment tank, which was 209 ft (70 m) across and 55 ft (18 m) deep, and held 7.5 million gallons (28,000 m3) of water. Remember that this was an unfinished, abandoned power station—which meant the tank was not watertight. They had to bring in dam engineers to fix it up. Then they had another problem: daylight. Because the film takes place in the inky darkness, they had to cover up this enormous tank. They used both an enormous tarp and a layer of floating black beads to block out the light. And, when the tarp blew away, they resorted to filming at night. (A lot of the info about the technical aspects of the film’s production come from an excellent on-set report from Starlog #146, and another article from The New York Times. There was a lot of contemporary press about the movie precisely because of the technical nature of the production.) What did they put into that tank besides millions of gallons of water? Well, pretty much what we see on screen. The film’s Deepcore rig is a real structure submerged in the large tank. The production brought on a commercial diving company to design and build two working submersibles—Cab One and Flatbed—as well as a third full-size mock-up. The large, transparent globe-like windows through which we often see Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and Flatbed operator “One Night” (Kimberly Scott) were designed specifically to allow for the characters to be filmed from the underwater exterior. They also needed to see the actors when they were wearing the dive suits, as diving scenes accounts for a great deal of the film’s runtime. The cameras were protected by custom-built waterproof housings, with another housing used for the scenes that switch between underwater and above water, often including dialogue. The production brought on an engineering company to design working dive helmets that would also allow for lights, cameras, and microphones. The helmets and dive suits had to be custom fit to each actor, as well as balanced and weighted to allow them to move about as they needed. Most of the cast had basically no diving experience beforehand; they spent a week in the Cayman Islands learning the basics before production began. Important note: They may have made the rat breathe liquid for real, but they didn’t do the same with Ed Harris. Instead, they made him hold his breath for a very long time while they filled his helmet with water. That on-set report in Starlog describes the filming of one of the movie’s best, more harrowing scenes: the part where the crane from the surface dislodges Deepcore and the rig begins to flood. It’s a tremendous sequence in the film, packed with panic, confusion, and tragedy as the characters rush to seal off parts of the flooding rig. It should come as no surprise by now that this scene was filmed by sending a flood of 50,000 gallons of water into the set, where the actors were slammed and drenched and tossed around. And, of course, they had to do it at least three times, because nothing is ever perfect on the first take. So, was it worth it? It depends on who you ask. In all interviews, then and now, Cameron seems to think it was. Members of the cast have always been less enthusiastic. I do think the film’s real-for-real production adds a great deal to the end result and makes all of the strong elements of the story—the disaster, the escalating danger, the problem-solving—carry even more weight. But I wasn’t the one getting full-body slammed by 50,000 gallons of cold water multiple times in a row to make it look good. I guess in the end I find myself appreciating The Abyss much in the same way I appreciate Tron (1982), or any other movie with complex, innovative, but ultimately one-of-a-kind productions. I’m glad they did it, as the result is a great deal of fun to watch, and the amount of knowledge, skill, and craftsmanship that went into the production is truly impressive. And I do think the realism of the production does enhance the tone of the story. If there were too many traces of falseness in the setting, we simply wouldn’t be able to immerse ourselves (pun intended, this time) in the movie in the same way. But I can also see why nobody ever did it quite the same way again. What do you think of The Abyss? I mostly talked about the production, because I find it so fascinating, but feel free to share your thoughts on the story or the different versions as well! How do you feel about that ending? Next week: Let’s try to save Earth with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. Watch it on Amazon, Apple, Fandango, and more.[end-mark] The post <i>The Abyss</i>: The Nuts-and-Bolts Approach to High-Pressure First Contact appeared first on Reactor.

The Department of Government Efficiency is right to look into waste, fraud, and abuse at the Department of Defense, and the first place to look is in the dollars being misdirected away from warfighting capabilities. The U.S. Military has struggled to meet demands for actual warfighting equipment, such as ships, fighter jets, and munitions. Many of these projects experience consistent delays and cost overruns. This makes it all the more astounding that so much of the DOD’s budget goes toward “research” that props up left-wing causes. For example, the DOD awarded a new round of $46.8 million in grants to the Minerva Research Initiative—broadly defined as supporting social science research to improve basic understanding of how “social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces shape security and conflict”—in August 2024. This new grant round represents an expansion of the program, which the Pentagon estimated in 2011 would receive about $50 million in defense grants over five years. Not only is this program redundant considering the over $300 million spent on University Research Initiatives between the Army, Navy, and Air Force, many of those in academia consider it ill advised. Since the inception of the Minerva Research Initiative in 2008, social sciences professors have heavily criticized it, saying military funding should not mix with social science research. Many researchers already report being suspected of working for U.S. intelligence agencies when they perform research abroad and receiving money from the DOD will do nothing to dispel these suspicions. Beyond all reservations about the mixing of military and academia, the Minerva Research Institute simply does not advance the country’s warfighting capability as much as the procurement of ships, aircraft, and munitions would. Take, for example, Future Fish Wars: Chasing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth,” a project that claims to analyze the economic and national security impact of climate change on fisheries. This project relies on the assumption not only that catastrophic man-made climate change exists, but that it affects the migratory patterns of certain species of fish. “Climate Change and Great Power Competition,” for which the Air Force Office of Scientific Research awarded grants between 2022 and 2025, endeavors to create a model of great power politics based on changes in resource allocation brought about by climate change. Whether or not the subject of these projects constitutes any real problem that the world faces, they certainly do not provide any advancements in warfighting capabilities. These examples represent a larger problem in defense spending. Money put towards the Minervia Research Initiative and other irrelevant projects would be better spent fielding equipment that helps us win wars while we leave the social science research to other government agencies, universities, or private industry. There are many more examples of this kind of wasteful spending. In December 2021, then-President Biden signed an executive order requiring that the federal fleet only acquire zero-emission vehicles by 2035, which includes military vehicles. The Global Engagement Center, established in 2016 and recently closed in the National Defense Authorization Act, aimed to expose foreign misinformation but was used against the American people. Reporter Matt Taibbi exposed the GEC through the Twitter Files for censoring information “describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon” and the lab leak theory. The Department of Education’s National Resource Centers have provided federal grants to regional studies programs since the 1950s, some of which unfortunately goes to woke universities with partisan left-wing agendas. George Washington University receives funding from the NRC for its Middle East Studies, which will soon host an event on March 6 titled, “Implications of Trump’s Ethnic Cleansing Plan for Gaza.” The Department of Education also recently canceled $350 million in woke spending that funded ideologically driven Regional Educational Laboratories and Equity Assistance Centers, which supported divisive training in “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” critical race theory, and gender identity. The DOD awarded $758,000 to the University of Missouri System to encourage science, technology, engineering, and math students to pursue a career in the Navy, but reports showed part of the funding went to supporting “equity-focused programmatic goals” and underrepresented minorities. Initiatives such as these may be better suited to organizations whose purpose is not to enhance the lethality of our military. While our military strength diminishes, that of our adversaries grows. As the U.S. Navy retires many of its aging ships and cuts the procurement of a Virginia-class submarine, and while the Air Force cuts its procurement of F-35 fighter jets, China continues to strengthen what is already the world’s largest naval fleet, where quantity is a quality all of its own. Additionally, combining China’s air force and naval assets, the Chinese Communist Party has the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific. DOGE has a treasure trove of material to analyze when it comes to wasteful spending within military spending. DOGE could start by scrutinizing spending reports, contracts, and grants awarded to universities and other such institutions to analyze whether they truly enhance the warfighting capabilities of the American military. Identifying projects that overlap between military branches would reduce redundant efforts and save valuable time, resources, and money. The resources saved should then be reallocated to the procurement of ships, planes, and munitions, helping America to rebuild the edge over our adversaries that we need. The post DOGE v DOD: David Meets Goliath appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, might not shock Europe’s leaders the way President Donald Trump does, but he too has a tough message for them. “Hear for yourself how it sounds,” he said last month: Five hundred million Europeans begging 300 million Americans to defend them from 140 million Russians. If you can count, count on yourself. Not in isolation, but with full awareness of your potential. Today, in Europe, we do not lack economic strength, people, but the belief that we are a global power. Decline is a choice—and for 30 years now, decline is what Europe’s political class has chosen. Poland, like Ukraine, has always been alert to the danger Russia poses. But Western European leaders can’t claim Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised them with his full-on invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He’d already grabbed Crimea eight years earlier and set up pro-Russian secessionist militias in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russian assassins even targeted dissidents in England, poisoning and killing Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and attempting to do the same to Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018. Yet all the while, Western Europe slept. Islamist terrorism did little to awaken the continent’s slumbering leaders, who continued to treat citizens calling for immigration restriction as the real enemy. Europe didn’t choose decline just because voters would rather spend money on welfare states than providing for defense. In two world wars and the protracted struggle of the Cold War, Europe’s democratic governments earned the popular support they needed to carry on their fight or prepare to meet future aggression. What changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall wasn’t the people of Europe but the quality of its leaders. From London to Brussels to Berlin, from Madrid to Paris to Stockholm, the continent’s elites adopted a philosophy that the American political theorist James Burnham described as “the ideology of Western suicide.” They embraced a progressive liberalism that demonized all the traditional sources of a nation’s strength—its historic religion, patriotic pride, and industrial base. Green parties and environmentalists emphasized fighting climate change over readiness to fight wars. Patriotism was treated as synonymous with xenophobia and the worst kinds of nationalism—with which Europe certainly had plenty of experience. But patriotism, and nationalism at its best, was the motive of those nations and resistance movements that fought the Nazis in World War II and defied communist “internationalism”—really communist imperialism—during the Cold War. Secularism, meanwhile, taught Europe’s leaders to think like materialists: They might talk about “values,” but the value of a pipeline deal with Russia was the kind of thing German leaders, in particular, really cared about. Indeed, energy policy is telling: Germany and others, with the notable exception of France, have abandoned clean and efficient nuclear power, which environmentalists detest. Less nuclear power means more energy must come from other sources—such as Russian natural gas. Liberal environmentalists prefer renewable energy from solar panels or windmills to fossil fuels of any kind, but the unreliability and expense of those renewables means Europeans who invest in them often end up having to turn back to fossil fuels in a cold winter, and the Russians, with no qualms about “dirty” energy and plenty of fossil fuels to sell, fill the gap. All this results in a weaker Europe with less energy available for industry—including defense industries—and dependent on fuel from a hostile neighbor. European elites up to now have not only been cheapskates when it comes to military spending, they found the very existence of their countries’ armed forces distasteful. When Ursula von der Leyen was Germany’s defense minister 10 years ago, German soldiers were reduced to using broomsticks as substitutes for heavy machine guns in NATO exercises—they just didn’t have enough real equipment. Germany is not a poor country; its armed forces were forced to play pretend with broomsticks because leaders didn’t care enough to keep them armed and ready for real action. Today, von der Leyen is president of the European Commission and calls for Europe to rearm. Her words, however, are belied by her record, the British historian David Starkey has pointed out. Europe took a 30-year vacation from history; now it is scrambling to make up for lost time, yet its nations are led by many of the same characters responsible for the continent’s weakness in the first place. And when voters demand change, as Germans did by giving the hard-right Alternative fur Deutschland a record 20% in last month’s election, establishment parties on the left and center-right form coalition governments that exclude these unwelcome agents of change. Donald Tusk is correct: Europe’s weakness is wholly self-inflicted. Now the question is whether the leaders responsible for three decades of decline can reverse course completely—or whether Europe needs its own Donald Trump-like figures to replace them. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Europe’s Decline Was a Choice appeared first on The Daily Signal.

MSNBC Panel: Democrats Really FUBAR'd the Moment, Huh?

One of the figures may have been created as a "clone" of a king.

Be honest. How many Oscar-winning pieces of “epic cinema” did you know even existed before their faceless academy of self-proclaimed elites told us they were epic pieces of cinema during Sunday’s annual ceremony? It is no stunning revelation that every Hollywood awards show is just a predictable routine for mediocre Diddy types to spend the equivalent of a year’s worth of USAID musicals so they can congratulate themselves for being mediocre.  Their entire industry is now a competition to see which performances and screenplays can be as painfully boring and subpar as possible on a generous budget that would make Volodymyr Zelenskyy blush.  Tune into this episode of Woke of the Weak, as I break down the decay of the entertainment industry, led by a small group of self-appointed cultural elites who reversed the standards.   

CBS’s Stephen Colbert stayed up for a live show on what turned out to be Wednesday morning after President Donald Trump’s address to Congress. Colbert spent his monologue praising Rep. Al Green for getting kicked out of the House chamber and attacking Trump on everything from transgender issues to shipbuilding. Later, he would welcome former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to wonder, “Where is the soul of our nation headed?” Democrats have long used Trump’s speeches as a chance to engage in eye-roll-inducing theatrics, but Colbert was a big fan of Green, “Speaker Mike Johnson threatened them with expulsion if they didn't sit down and ultimately, Johnson called in the sergeant at arms to remove 77-year-old Texas Congressman Al Green. Now, some people questioned why so much muscle was needed to remove one old man with a cane. But it turns out it was for a serious reason. When security searched him, they found that he smuggled in a spine. Yeah. It's dangerous. You can't have that.” After a clip of Trump declaring that there is nothing he could do that will make Democrats happy, Colbert had an idea, “Oh, I don't know. Try saying, ‘I resign.’”     Colbert also played a video of Trump on immigration where he declared, “The media and our friends the Democrat Party kept saying, ‘We needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border.’ But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.  A tradition of these sorts of speeches is the president’s party standing up and applauding everything they say, but Colbert found that ironic, “I get that he's your guy, but isn't it weird for members of Congress to applaud him taking all their power away? ‘Whooooo! We're worthless worms! Choke us, daddy!’" Of course, Congress passed the original legislation that allows Trump to enforce current law. Still, Colbert then reminded everyone that he considers himself to be one of America’s leading voices of the religious left, “Then we reached the transphobic part of the speech, where the president made this paradoxical statement.” The statement in question was, “Our message to every child is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.” Apparently, Colbert thinks God would put someone in the wrong body because he brought out his Trump voice and added, “Unless God made you transgender or from the magical land of Lee-sooto. Tough luck! Tough luck being imaginary.” The Navy non-expert later used his own ignorance of such topics to recall, “And then for reasons that escape me, he talked about bringing back America's shipbuilding industry.” Following a clip of Trump announcing “a new office of shipbuilding in the White House,” Colbert quipped, “That checks out. I've seen your cabinet. There are pieces of ship all over the White House these days.” Later, Colbert welcomed Buttigieg and asked him, “What was your reaction to tonight's speech? That's the first six weeks and where we are right now. How about how he summed up the state of our nation and what his plans are?” Buttigieg replied that “it was classic Trump, right? It was a lot of darkness and a lot of dazzle.”     Continuing Democratic habits of doing a 180 on their perception of the economy, he continued, “But there was very, very little about the things that most affect our lives. I believe politics is about everyday life. It's about what government can and must do to make our everyday lives better and the biggest issue on people's minds, the affordability of everyday life, it's not something that got more than a few seconds of mention in his speech.” Further on in their interview, Colbert memory-holed any violence, harassment, or obstruction that occurred during last year’s anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses, “For instance, Trump put this out the other day, he said, ‘All federal funding will stop for any college school or university that allows illegal protests.’ I'm sorry. This is America. What the hell is an illegal protest?” Buttigieg likewise forgot about those events, “That's just it. We have to stand up to this. By the "we," I don't just mean Democrats. Freedom-loving conservatives, libertarians, where are you?... if you are so committed to liberty as a libertarian or freedom-loving conservative that you think the Clean Air Act is tyranny, then what do you have to say about the head of your government threatening to expel or imprison people who protest in disagreement with his politics? Where are you? We should be able to come together around that.” Next, Colbert lamented and wondered, “The Trump Administration has curtailed protections on human rights, especially for the LGBTQ community. He bragged about it tonight. What does that say about where our country is headed morally? Where is the soul of our nation headed?” Buttigieg replied that, “our nation has always been at its best when it widens the circle of belonging and equality to take care of more people and not less, and our nation has been at its worst when we've been discriminating.” Moving on to the Supreme Court, Colbert worried, “Do you have any sense, do you have any fear that this Supreme Court would overturn Obergefell?” Happy to play along, Buttigieg claimed, “They certainly don’t seem terribly concerned about allowing precedents to stand, even recent precedents, so, you know, how can we not be worried about that?” Perhaps with all the turnover at MSNBC, Colbert could apply for a hosting gig there. It wouldn’t be that different from his current job. Here is a transcript for the March 4-5 show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 3/5/2025 12:06 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: Then, just minutes into the speech, all hell broke loose. Democrats stood up, started booing. Speaker Mike Johnson threatened them with expulsion if they didn't sit down and ultimately, Johnson called in the sergeant at arms to remove 77-year-old Texas Congressman Al Green. Now, some people questioned why so much muscle was needed to remove one old man with a cane. But it turns out it was for a serious reason. When security searched him, they found that he smuggled in a spine. Yeah. It's dangerous. You can't have that. You can't have that. After the interruption, Trump whined about the opposition. DONALD TRUMP: Once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me. And I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud. Nothing I can do. COLBERT: Oh, I don't know. Try saying, "I resign." … COLBERT: Trump bragged about his executive orders on immigration. TRUMP: The media and our friends the Democrat Party kept saying, “We needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border.” But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.  COLBERT: I get that he's your guy, but isn't it weird for members of Congress to applaud him taking all their power away? "Whooooo! We're worthless worms! Choke us, daddy!" … COLBERT: Then we reached the transphobic part of the speech, where the president made this paradoxical statement. TRUMP: Our message to every child is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you. COLBERT: [TRUMP VOICE] Unless God made you transgender or from the magical land of Lee-sooto. Tough luck! Tough luck being imaginary.  … COLBERT: And then for reasons that escape me, he talked about bringing back America's shipbuilding industry. TRUMP: I am announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House. COLBERT: That checks out. I've seen your cabinet. There are pieces of ship all over the White House these days.   … COLBERT: What was your reaction to tonight's speech? That's the first six weeks and where we are right now.  PETE BUTTIGIEG: Yeah. COLBERT: How about how he summed up the state of our nation and what his plans are? BUTTIGIEG: Look, it was classic Trump, right? It was a lot of darkness and a lot of dazzle. But there was very, very little about the things that most affect our lives. I believe politics is about everyday life. It's about what government can and must do to make our everyday lives better and the biggest issue on people's minds, the affordability of everyday life, it's not something that got more than a few seconds of mention in his speech.  Nor did he mention some of the biggest things in dollar terms that he's doing. I mean, objectively. The biggest thing that he's working on his tax cuts for the rich, $5 trillion minimum. No mention in his speech that was what, two hours, I think the longest of its kind ever, right? But it's always like this, right? It’s always going to be about—they're going to talk about Greenland and about pronouns and about mice and not about what's actually going to make our lives better. … COLBERT: For instance, Trump put this out the other day, he said, “All federal funding will stop for any college school or university that allows illegal protests.” I'm sorry. This is America. What the hell is an illegal protest? BUTTIGIEG: That's just it. We have to stand up to this. By the "we," I don't just mean Democrats. Freedom-loving conservatives, libertarians, where are you? Like, we might not agree on everything. But if you are so committed to liberty as a libertarian or freedom-loving conservative that you think the Clean Air Act is tyranny, then what do you have to say about the head of your government threatening to expel or imprison people who protest in disagreement with his politics? Where are you? We should be able to come together around that. COLBERT: The Trump Administration has curtailed protections on human rights, especially for the LGBTQ community. He bragged about it tonight. What does that say about where our country is headed morally? Where is the soul of our nation headed? BUTTIGIEG: Look, our nation has always been at its best when it widens the circle of belonging and equality to take care of more people and not less, and our nation has been at its worst when we've been discriminating. COLBERT: Do you have any sense, do you have any fear that this Supreme Court would overturn Obergefell? BUTTIGIEG: Sure. COLBERT: And the right for gay people to marry? BUTTIGIEG: Yeah, I mean, they certainly don’t seem terribly concerned about allowing precedents to stand, even recent precedents, so, you know, how can we not be worried about that?

Needless to say, ABC, CBS, and NBC offered far different reactions Tuesday night to President Trump’s address to Congress (think State of the Union, but not granted that title in a president’s first year) than they did in immediately celebrating last year’s partisan State of the Union from Joe Biden. For 2025, they were more lackadaisical in their disdain for Trump’s “intensely partisan” “campaign rally speech” marred by “loud, visceral, ugly” denunciations of the theatrics throughout by Democrats, including Congressman Al Green’s (D-TX). CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson predictably found reason to dislike it: “[W]hile voters say that lowering prices is there a key issue, it was arguably the thing that got him elected, he spent very little of the speech on that and indeed he devoted more direct attention and detail to the issue to transgender issues than he did to lowering consumer prices.” Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan provided the partisan contrast with disgust for Trump’s white-hot speech even though her network was thrilled with President Biden’s partisan speech a year earlier: “This really felt like a campaign rally speech more slogan than substantive policy, even down to referring to Joe Biden is the worst president in history. You were very diplomatic, John, when you said words you don’t often hear in these chambers like that.” Inside the House Chamber, January 6-obsessed correspondent Scott MacFarlane didn’t have a problem with any of the left’s theatrics. Instead, he was mad about how Republicans responded: CBS's January 6 correspondent Scott MacFarlane complains "there was a loud, visceral, ugly screaming" at Houston Democrat Al Green for heckling President Trump during his address, NOT that Green and his fellow Democrats interrupted Trump to begin with. He then took issue with a… pic.twitter.com/GKWh4cMG0F — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 5, 2025 Dickerson and senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang gave more ammunition to the predictable double standard: CBS's John Dickerson: "[T]his was as much of a campaign speech as you can have or at least as we've ever seen in that venue." Weijia Jiang: "Yeah, there were so many points, John, where he sounded like candidate Trump and not President Trump. It's one thing to lay the blame on… pic.twitter.com/9QFUfmaWhD — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 5, 2025 Following the Democratic response from Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett dialed back on the apocalyptic nonsense he delivered hours earlier on CBS Mornings and admitted things Washington elites were turned off by likely resonated with real America (click “expand”):     So, I've learned to be humble about analyzing speeches like this because the country often catches on to things that those of us in Washington might not sift the way the country does. When the President listed things that he thought were extravagant examples of wasteful spending, those of us around this table might say, well, that's not going to be enough, even if you cut all that to balance the budget which is $840 billion, out of balance. Americans will hear it and say wait a minute, those things found wasteful to me. Sounds like Elon Musk and the President are onto something. There was also tremendous emotive power in several parts of the speech and I think it will resonate across the country, whether it's Lake Riley slain, her mother and sister or Marc and his mother, Malphine Fogel, rescued, brought back from Russia, or a Border Patrol agent Roberto Ortiz, or Stephanie Diller, the surviving spouse of a slain New York City police officer. Those things carry emotional weight not only the moment, but probably, inevitably in the pass around social media dissection of the speech. I keep my eyes and ears tuned to emotional moments like that that often jump over the instantaneous Beltway analysis. In contrast, chief Washington analyst Robert Costa seemed to imply Slotkin and Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger — two middle-aged white women — could be the kinds of candidates Democrats need to thwart Trumpism. Over on NBC, Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker argued Trump gave “a culture war speech” and “so notable” and reminder of “what swept him into the White House” even though it “[t]ook him 20 minutes to talk about the top issue for voters, which is, by the way, the economy.” Senior Washington correspondent Hallie agreed it was a speech on “culture war issues,” but had the wherewithal to note his views on DEI and transgenderism are widely popular and thus it wasn’t surprising he “lean[ed] into” what’s been “a political winner[.]” Welker later continued hosting on the free streaming channel NBC News NOW after NBC’s coverage wrapped, firing off a series of grievances against Trump’s “intensely partisan” speech and dismissed the reality he had a decisive November win: NBC's Kristen Welker on NBC News NOW: "The speech was brash, boastful, at times intensely partisan, focused on culture war issues and, at times, rife with hyperbole. It was also the longest presidential address to Congress ever. Democrats in the hall pushing back at times… pic.twitter.com/Y9h5IP7YlD — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 5, 2025 Prior to the speech, Jackson peddled this cartoonish anonymous anecdote: Before President Trump's speech, NBC's Hallie Jackson cited an anonymous mom she spoke to in her 30s whom she claimed voted for Trump, but wishes she could have voted to keep @ElonMusk (and, by extension, @DOGE) from having come to fruition pic.twitter.com/p3O7j152sY — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 5, 2025 ABC, meanwhile, came off as sedate and was perhaps out of exhaustion with the evening. World News Tonight anchor David Muir lamented “the chamber divided” with Democrats facing “a bit of challenge, it would seem” in “how to respond to what they perceive as a difficult 44 days.” Even far-left senior political correspondent Rachel Scott conceded the contrast between the theatrics of congressional Democrats vs. the lucid Slotkin as proof of her team coming off as “disjointed.” Beforehand, ABC had this ridiculous moment: ABC is BIG MAD that the Senate confirmed President Trump's cabinet appointments. Notice the part when Martha Raddatz had the split-second correction after having falsely claimed @PeteHegseth was "charged" with sexual assault pic.twitter.com/o5I6jqf11X — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 5, 2025

A 41-year-old male is accused of slapping, dragging, and slamming down a 23-month-old boy after the child refused to give him a goodnight kiss.Police in Killeen, Texas, said they were called to the 200 block of West Anderson Avenue on a domestic violence complaint, KWKT-TV reported. Killeen is a little over an hour north of Austin. Jail records indicate the incident occurred Friday.'They need to lock him up and throw away the key.'Police were told the child refused to give the male a goodnight kiss, the station said. The male is accused of slapping the boy on the cheeks, back, and buttocks, then dragging the boy to his bedroom, slamming the child upon the bed, pinning him down, and preventing him from reaching the person who ended up reporting the incident, KWKT reported.The suspect was identified as Craig Lamont Jones, the station said.He was arrested on charges of assault causing bodily injury to a family member and injury to a child with intent to cause bodily injury, KWKT said.Jones on Wednesday morning remained in Bell County Jail. His bond totals $82,500.How are people reacting?As you might guess, observers are not happy with the accused:"They need to lock him up and throw away the key," one Facebook commenter declared."Hell, I wouldn't kiss him, either," another user stated."I hope the mom moves far away," another commenter wrote."Keep this psycho away from kids," another user demanded."That poor baby," another commenter observed, adding, "Who knows what ... he’s been through.""They about to have fun with him in jail," another user predicted."I’m thankful the other person in the household reported it and didn’t turn a blind eye to the abuse," another commenter said. "Hopefully this was an isolated incident for that poor baby."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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