When you hear liberals complaining about how the media today are in urgent danger of “bending the knee” to President Trump, point and laugh and think about the Kennedy family. Journalists bending the knee to the Kennedys has been mandatory since the 1950s. That’s their most obvious form of white privilege. It’s still happening. In the last few days, CBS and CNN have offered puffy profiles of John Bouvier Kennedy (Jack) Schlossberg, the only grandson of JFK. At 33, he’s running for Congress in New York City to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler. The CBS show Sunday Morning operates like an assembly line of Democrat puff pieces. In this case, Mo Rocca channeled all the Camelot energy and then noted Trump put his own name on the Kennedy Center. Rocca asked Schlossberg an unserious question: “Do you think that Trump is going to have it razed to the ground?” Schlossberg compared the president to an assassin: “I think he could easily demolish it. He`s trying to kill JFK. JFK will never die because he’s kept alive by the people who are fighting, organizing, and rising up now to remove Trump from power.” CNN host Dana Bash promised she’d put her Schlossberg piece on her Sunday show State of the Union, but war in Iran changed that plan. This was Bash’s idea of a tough question: “I heard you say that you're an outsider in this race. To people who are on the outside, they hear you say you're an outsider, and they're like, come on.” Schlossberg easily answered: “I know. It's ironic coming out of my mouth, with the Kennedy legacy and what I represent. It might be hard to believe, but it's absolutely true.” It’s true that Jerry Nadler would rather be replaced by somebody else, but no one else in this primary is going to get gushy press clips from national TV. CBS and NBC each launched morning-show gush when he announced his campaign last November. Bash also briefly noted some people say Schlossberg’s “never had a real job.” That argument is true. The Washington Free Beacon reported Schlossberg received no "earned income" in 2025, but holds millions of dollars worth of assets in four trust funds. He told Bash that creating content for his social-media followers is a “full-time job.” Rocca’s toughest question on CBS was about that content. “Some of it`s very funny, but I`ll tell you one that made me wince,” Rocca said. It was about Vice President J.D. Vance’s wife Usha. “Specifically the one where you superimposed your face on one of her kids. The joke being that you and she had a love child. Now, she`s not elected. Is that crossing a line?” Schlossberg didn’t flinch: “I think what’s crossing a line is the propaganda that we see issued every single day by the White House and -- and Vance, okay?...So what are we going to do? Hold back on our sense of humor and not tease them?” Schlossberg creepily joked about Mrs. Vance: “I’m having a son!! I’m so excited about this. Cannot wait for the birth of my next child because today was the best day of my life,” he wrote on X, adding “Out of wedlock, yes. But we might get married.” This primary election might demonstrate that being a Kennedy means that you can be a completely shameless and hateful troll on social media and still get elected by Democrats. Or this will be another sad chapter about how the Kennedy magic isn’t working with voters – even if the media elite’s still bending the knee. 

On a recent episode of CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, more colloquially known as the “Thunderdome”, we got to see a blatant double standard in how table bookings play out. Shermichael Singleton and Ana Navarro went back and forth over the recent conduct of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during press briefings. Watch the aforementioned segment, as aired on March 4th, 2026 (click "expand" to view transcript): WATCH: @MrShermichael Singleton reminds the NewsNight panel criticizing Pete Hegseth's remarks that he DID serve and is fully aware of the fact that war is hell. SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: Can I just make one point of objection to what Ana just said? You know, in politics, sometimes… pic.twitter.com/nWiEkDxSe0 — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) March 5, 2026 ANA NAVARRO, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's incredible to me that we are, what, four, five days into this now, and there still hasn't been a formal address to the nation by the president of the United States. Look, I think, Donald Trump, and to a certain extent Hegseth as well, I think their psyche changed as a result of Venezuela. They are emboldened. Donald Trump realized he's got the biggest, most powerful armed forces in the world, and he intends to use them whenever he wants and however he wants. He didn't have to get permission for Congress to do the Maduro operation. And so now he thinks he can replicate it elsewhere. Obviously, Iran and Venezuela are two completely different balls of wax. We had two completely different regimes with capacities. Venezuela did not have the capacity. Maduro did not have the capacity to inflict pain and war on America. Iran has much greater capacities. I think -- you know what I think is tragic, that Pete Hegseth refers to the death of six Americans as tragic things happen. Almost flippantly. And I think the bellicose and, you know, braggadocious narrative and rhetoric you're hearing from him, that's what happens when you pick an unqualified weekend Fox News host to be secretary of defense. And I'm old enough to remember, and so are we around this table, 2003, when George W. Bush stood in a U.S. aircraft carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished.” And it was years of more fighting that ensued, and that was very premature. So, him beating his chest and talking about all feels like not the right thing at the right time. And his focus should be on the loss of life. SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON: Can I just make one point of objection to what Ana just said? You know, in politics, sometimes we make flippant remarks. If we could go back and do it over, we would. Pete Hegseth has served this country honorably- a tour in Afghanistan, a tour in Iraq. I never put on the uniform, but I certainly have a lot of damn respect for the people who do. He led his troops for about a year as a leader, and many of the generals and individuals who gave him a Bronze Star wrote admirably about his leadership position. So I don't think that this is someone who doesn't recognize the importance of war, the toll it takes on families, and that you might indeed pay the ultimate price. And so I think we shouldn't forget that. We may dislike him. You may not like the comment that he made and we could critique maybe it wasn't the right way to word it, but but this is someone who knows war more than anybody at this table that I'm familiar with, and we should keep that in mind. ABBY PHILLIP: I mean, she was critiquing the comment that he made. She wasn’t- she wasn’t denigrating his service but she was- she was critiquing. She was critiquing his comment. I do think… (unint)   NAVARRO: Well, but Shermichael, let me remind you that this is the same guy that was on a chat group revealing all sorts of information that should not have revealed in that chat group to all sorts of people that should not have had that information, including a journalist, who he didn't even know was on the chat group. SINGLETON: And, Ana, I have no quarrels with this, with that at all. My point simply is this guy understands what happens when you go to war. He's been to war. He's seen people die. He's been to combat. And, again, I would've phrased it differently, sure, we can have that argument. NAVARRO: He was reading from prepared remarks. SINGLETON: But to but to make the case that he doesn't care? That soldiers lost their lives? I find that hard as hell to believe. NAVARRO: I did not say he doesn’t care. I said that the way he phrased it as “tragic things happened” was a very unfortunate way to discuss the loss of six lives, SINGLETON: Okay. Unfortunate, I'll take that. I'll take the unfortunate. The first thing that jumps out at you here is that Ana Navarro enjoys the privilege of being able to spew all manner of invective at Hegseth, with arguments that go all over the place, without ever having to worry about being interrupted by host Abby Phillip. This speaks to the booking disparities at NewsNight, wherein you see all manner of incendiary commentators on the left who come on and offer up little more than bilious bombast. This stands in contrast to the conservatives booked on the show, who often have to cut through both this rhetorical wall just to then get cut off by Abby Phillip. Shermichael Singleton immediately rebutted Navarro with a take that was thoughtful and well-reasoned- a contrast to Navarro’s bomb-throwing. Hegseth served in combat and is intimately familiar with death in service of one’s country, and it is terrible to suggest that he doesn’t care about his deployed troops. It is at this point that Phillip cuts in, perhaps trying to buy Navarro a little bit of covering time so she can regroup. Navarro tries to get back into it, and goes back to flailing around, throwing around non sequiturs that do not address the substance of Singleton’s rebuttal. But time has run and now the segment’s over. NewsNight viewers see for themselves the guest disparity on display, and watch Phillip cut off yet another conservative. Again.

During an interview on Wednesday’s Ana Cabrera Reports, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister confirmed key details of a Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s interview on FOX News where he stated the Iranians claimed to have enough material for eleven nuclear bombs, a statement that MS NOW rushed to report was false based on an "anonymous Gulf diplomat.” On Monday, Witkoff said “the Iranian negotiators said to us, directly, with, you know, no shame that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60 percent, and they're aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.” MS NOW’s senior national security reporter David Rohde reported last night that Witkoff’s claims were false and went on Morning Joe the next morning to parrot the anonymous diplomat’s claims: Witkoff claimed that the Iranians bragged that they had enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs. It was a Sean Hannity interview. People who were present during the negotiations said that never happened, that the Iranians never made that statement. And in fact, they said, we have enriched uranium because we started enriching uranium again after President Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal that President Obama negotiated. So it's a continuation of a - the administration is struggling to explain why they had to do this now.   Watch as MS NOW Senior National Security Reporter, David Rohde, has his story on Witkoff's "undermining" of negotiations disproven after an interview with an Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister on his own network: pic.twitter.com/Vi22onVlKj — Nick (@nspin310) March 4, 2026   But, just less than two hours later, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, basically confirmed the details of Witkoff’s Hannity interview, disproving a main part of MS NOW’s online story, after a Question from Cabrera: (...) I want you to please bring Mr. Witkoff to your show and the things that I'm sharing with you, just share these things with him and then try to ask him to comment on this. When the question of plus 400 kilograms of 60 percent material was raised in the meeting, we were not reacting. We were just stating a fact.  And in fact, the amount of nuclear bombs corresponding to those 400-something kilograms is an estimate by European specialists. They are telling us that this is ten-point-two (10.2), you know, bombs. So, we are not bragging. We were just saying that this is the results of our scientific achievements. But we are ready to, you know, send this - I mean, to get rid of this, provided that we have - we will get something good in return. So he was unfortunately, Mr. Witkoff, is misrepresenting the fact and it was not the case at all. And by the way, Iran was not a party to renege on its promise. (...) “It sounds like you just confirmed those details, though, that we heard from Steve Witkoff about the amount and percentage of the enriched uranium,” Cabrera said, realizing the their discrepancy. “So, to clarify, and just to really drill down on this, does Iran have enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs?” Takht-Ravanchi then went on to say this was just IAEA statistics, but he still proved key details of Witkoff’s comments. Funny enough, Rohde was the next guest immediately following the deputy minister to respond to the interview, with Cabrera seemingly unaware of Rohde’s report: ROHDE: I wrote a story on Witkoff’s claim that they were sort of bragging about it. I was told that they had it, they said, because that had enriched that once president trump had pulled out of the nuclear agreement that was agreed to by President Obama. But I have to be honest, this regime hasn't always been clear or truthful about its enrichment efforts. CABRERA: He did seem to confirm, though, the details -  ROHDE: Yes. CABRERA: - of what we heard from Witkoff, which stood out to me. (...) Somehow, later in the day, Rohde went on Katy Tur Reports and shared his false report while referencing the interview that proved him false. In reference to his same report, Rohde said, "And it struck me, so I went back to sources who know about what happened in the negotiations, and they just said, flat out, that never happened." Maybe one should not take information from an anonymous gulf diplomat, with clear biases, to report on falsehoods of negotiations with a country that was notorious for lying under the faltering Islamic regime. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Morning Joe March 4, 2026 8:40:34 AM Eastern DAVID ROHDE: I had the same questions about no real explanation about why this had to happen now. He brought up something that we've actually done some reporting on. It's basically claims that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, and this is something Steve Witkoff talked about in a Fox News interview a couple nights ago, and we contacted people with knowledge of the negotiations.  Witkoff claimed that the Iranians bragged that they had enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs. It was a Sean Hannity interview. People who were present during the negotiations said that never happened, that the Iranians never made that statement. And in fact, they said, we have enriched uranium because we started enriching uranium again after President Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal that President Obama negotiated. So it's a continuation of a - the administration is struggling to explain why they had to do this now.  And in terms of the objectives, you know, I was struck like you. It's just very unusual, we talked about exquisite, you know, standoff munitions. At one point he compared it to a football game and at the end he was sort of talking about, you know, pushing the throttle up. Waging war is one of the most serious things the American government can do. Six Americans have lost their lives already. And so it's - he seems enamored with the ability of air power alone and these bombs to break the will of Iranian forces and maybe they will, and this is a terrible regime, and maybe they will be toppled. But I'm still concerned about the strategy the administration has here. And I still think that the objective is unclear. (...)   MS NOW’s Ana Cabrera Reports March 4, 2026 10:22:18 AM Eastern ANA CABRERA: The White House also says the negotiations ahead of this war were doomed to fail, because your country was acting in bad faith. I want to play for you what U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff said this week about these negotiations. Take a listen. [Cuts to video] U.S. ENVOY STEVE WITKOFF: Let me say this because I forgot this small little detail. In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us, directly, with, you know, no shame that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60 percent, and they're aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance. So that's - they were proud of it. They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs. {Cuts back to live] ANA CABRERA: Minister, is that true? IRAN DEP. FOREIGN MINISTER MAJID TAKHT-RAVANCHI: Not at all. I want you to please bring Mr. Witkoff to your show and the things that I'm sharing with you, just share these things with him and then try to ask him to comment on this. When the question of plus 400 kilograms of 60 percent material was raised in the meeting, we were not reacting. We were just stating a fact.  And in fact, the amount of nuclear bombs corresponding to those 400-something kilograms is an estimate by European specialists. They are telling us that this is 10.2, you know, bombs. So, we are not bragging. We were just saying that this is the results of our scientific achievements. But we are ready to, you know, send this - I mean, to get rid of this, provided that we have - we will get something good in return. So he was unfortunately, Mr. Witkoff, is misrepresenting the fact and it was not the case at all. And by the way, Iran was not a party to renege on its promise.  During the last meeting that we had in Geneva. At the end of the meeting, all sides, including the Americans, and Iran, and the mediators, the foreign minister of Oman, all of us agreed that we had a good meeting. We had progress. And in fact, we agreed to send a technical teams - technical team to Vienna. And by the end of the week, we agreed to meet in principle.  So what happened from Thursday night, when we injured adjourned the meeting, till Saturday morning, when we are faced with an act of aggression. Mr. Witkoff has to come to your show and tell the audience why they have changed their mind. Why they were satisfied with the results of negotiations in Geneva, and then in less than 48 hours, they changed course and resorted to violence and acts of aggression. CABRERA: It sounds like you just confirmed those details, though, that we heard from Steve Witkoff about the amount and percentage of the enriched uranium. So, to clarify, and just to really drill down on this, does Iran have enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs? TAKHT-RAVANCHI: No, we have -  it is not - it is no secret. This is based on the information which appears in different IAEA, atomic energy organization, International Atomic Energy Organization, which says that Iran is in the possession of this amount of 60 percent material, so this is no secret. But the point is that that amount of 60 percent enrichment, if it is enriched to a higher degree, that would amount to 10.2 bombs. That did not mean that we were looking for, you know, possessing 10.2 nuclear bombs.  We were telling the American delegation that this is the assessment by the European experts that this amount of enriched 60 percent enriched uranium can deliver around 10.2 nuclear bombs. But they did not say that we are going to use them. We did not say even that we wanted to enrich that amount to a higher degree. The point that Mr. Witkoff was trying to convey was that Iran was bragging about this nuclear material that is in our possession, and that was the reason that the talks didn't succeed. That was not true at all. (...) 10:32:08 AM Eastern CABRERA: I want to bring in MS NOW's senior national security reporter, David Rohde. And, David, as you were listening, what was going through your mind? What are your top takeaways? DAVID ROHDE: The war will continue. I didn't hear much flexibility in what he said. You know, he was evasive on the answer about why they're still cutting off communications to the population. And he was sort of - he didn't explain very well why they had all that enriched uranium. I wrote a story on Witkoff’s claim that they were sort of bragging about it. I was told that they had it, they said, because that had enriched that once President Trump had pulled out of the nuclear agreement that was agreed to by President Obama. But I have to be honest, this regime hasn't always been clear or truthful about its enrichment efforts. CABRERA: He did seem to confirm, though, the details -  ROHDE: Yes. CABRERA: - of what we heard from Witkoff, which stood out to me. He also said that they have had no communication either direction with the U.S. since the beginning of this war. ROHDE: Yeah, that's what - that's ,of all the points, that's the one that sort of is the most disappointing. There's no backchannel. There was a report in The New York Times that the Iranians had reached out through a third country spy service to try to start a dialog, that was just on the first day of the - of this attack. So, it's just a grim situation because it just seems like he was sticking to his talking points and not really making any gestures to, to start more of a dialog. (...) MS NOW’s Katy Tur Reports March 4. 2026 2:07:25 PM   KATY TUR: Give me your reporting about the negotiations, because the administration keeps saying that the reason they had to do this is because the Iranians were lying to them in negotiations and being stubborn about their nuclear program.   ROHDE: So, it started with an interview that Steve Witkoff gave on Fox News on Monday night. And he said on live TV that when they had their first meeting with the Iranians, the Iranians bragged about all the enriched uranium that they had and that they had so much enriched uranium that they could make ten nuclear bombs. And it struck me, so I went back to sources who know about what happened in the negotiations, and they just said, flat out, that never happened. The Iranians never happened.    And then we actually had earlier today on MS NOW, the deputy foreign minister of Iran, and he confirmed what I was also told was that the Iranians have this enriched uranium, and they were willing to hand it over as part of the deal. That that's what they said to Witkoff. So, it's just, again, back to what led them to carry out these strikes now. Why was there such a rush? And then what's the objective? It's all still unclear.

CNN's Brian Stelter wasn't "Facts First" when he tweeted: "Pete Hegseth reverting to his fake-news routine in today's Pentagon presser." What's fake? "The press only wants to make the president look bad." Does Stelter watch CNN? Or maybe it was the rest of the phrase "try for once to report the reality." Jim Acosta also trashed Hegseth on X: "Even though the briefing room was filled with his MAGA buddies, Hegseth still resorted to Fox MAGA talking points to bash the press." And: "Stocking these Pentagon briefings with MAGA ringers is an absolute disgrace. This is what state TV looks like." This was also Acosta: "Lindell TV,  the Daily Wire, Gateway Pundit, Tim Pool. These are the 'outlets' asking 'questions' at a Pentagon briefing on a war. How are the American people served by this?" MRC Free Speech America associate editor Luis Cornelio and MRC Government Affairs Manager Jerris Jackson joined the show. Mary Margaret Olohan at the Daily Wire noted the War Department approved these outlets for the presser: ABC, CBS, NBC, MS NOW, Fox News, Newsmax, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Reuters, and Bloomberg. Stelter kept complaining: "Most of the questions at the Pentagon briefing came from right-wing outlets like The Daily Wire and LindellTV that have little experience covering the military. Hegseth did field a Q from the BBC, though; he seemed to pick the reporter based on the tie the reporter was wearing." At the White House briefing, CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Karoline Leavitt:  “You just mentioned the President is going to attend the dignified transfer for these families. Given what Secretary Hegseth said this morning, is it the position of this administration that the press should not prominently cover the deaths of U.S. service members?” Leavitt appropriately told her off.  We also discuss our Bill D'Agostino's latest study, on how CNN and MS NOW lightly covered the mass shooting outside a bar in Austin, Texas. Over three days, these two networks only covered this story for about 30 minutes combined. Diagne’s status as a naturalized citizen from Senegal was brought up five times, and his “Property of Allah” hoodie saw three mentions. But even with those references to the obvious religious messaging on his clothing, nobody on CNN of MS NOW could bring themselves to utter the words “Muslim” or “Islam.”  Finally, there's the usual disparity in hearings coverage. The House Republicans grilling Gov. Tim Walz on Somali fraud are going to get ignored. House Republicans and Democrats jointly grilling Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was not ignored. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem testified. Online, ABC centered Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.):  "You've turned our government against our people, and you've turned our people against our government." Democrats always translate "illegal aliens" into "our people," "our neighbors," and even "Americans."  Enjoy the podcast below on video. Or listen to the audio here.   

“Republicans love Donald Trump more than any president's own party supporters loved them at this particular point,” CNN’s Harry Enten reported Thursday, citing results of his network’s latest poll. No other president has had this high a percentage of overall approval by supporters of his own party at this point in his presidency, Enten said while explaining why almost all of the primary candidates endorsed by Trump win: “Why? Because Republicans love Donald Trump more than any president's own party supporters loved him at this particular point. “Just take a look here, okay. Own-party supporters, 21st century presidents’ own-party approval about at this point in a second term: Bush was at 77%, Obama was at 77%. Look at this: 86% of Republicans approve of the job that Donald Trump is doing at this point. “That is higher than either Obama or Bush had within their own party at this point. Trump's magic touch has not seemed to wore off yet, when it comes to the Republican base.” What’s more, over half of his own party say they “strongly” approve of Trump, Enten noted: “The strongly approve, not just like, but love. Love, okay. We're going to look at these same presidents again. Strong approval among your own party's base. “What you see is Trump is the only one who gets a majority at this point in their presidency. Obama was at 48%. Bush was at 47%. You see here Trump at 53%. “Not as high as overall approval rating, but still getting a majority of the Republican base, at least in the average of polls, to say that they still really, really, really like him.” CNN’s findings are virtually identical to those of a Fox News survey of registered voters published Wednesday showing that 87% of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance. In contrast, 95% of Democrats voiced disapproval of Trump. But, Democrats were also more sour on their own party’s leaders, the Fox poll reveals. While more than three-fourths (77%) of Republicans approve of their party’s leaders, only 62% of Democrats approve of theirs. pic.twitter.com/M7dKrKVbXM — Craig Bannister (@CraigBBannister) March 5, 2026