MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell spent the early part of Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word demanding that President Trump be impeached for allegedly receiving bribes from ABC and CBS because, according to him, CBS’s decision to not allow Stephen Colbert to interview Texas Senate candidate James Talarico follows the same pattern as the decision to pay Trump $16 million as part of a 60 Minutes-related settlement. O’Donnell urged viewers to “remember this about the CBS lawyers: they are the weakest, most cowardly corporate lawyers in America. They are actually in a tie with ABC's lawyers, who we will get to in a moment. The CBS lawyers who are now trying to tell Stephen Colbert, who can be a guest on his show, work for a parent company that agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit by Donald Trump against 60 Minutes, which Donald Trump had no chance of winning. Absolutely zero chance of winning.”   Lawrence O'Donnell implies that the FCC-Colbert dust up should be used as evidence at an impeachment trial, "Those cowardly corporate lawyers agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million in what Stephen Colbert correctly called, quote, 'a big, fat bribe.' Those lawyers should be… pic.twitter.com/8bvshoe6Ts — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 18, 2026   It is worth noting that O’Donnell is assuming Colbert’s version of events is the truth, but CBS insists that it did not force Colbert to relegate the interview to YouTube but instead simply offered suggestions on how to fulfill any equal time obligations. As Colbert and CBS trade allegations of untruthfulness, O’Donnell rolled on: But those cowardly corporate lawyers agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million in what Stephen Colbert correctly called, quote, ‘a big, fat bribe.’ Those lawyers should be witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the United States Senate right now, for that bribe. That is their filthy spot that they now occupy in American political and corporate legal history, right beside the ABC lawyers for their corporate parent, Disney, that agreed to pay Donald Trump $15 million in a frivolous lawsuit against ABC News, a lawsuit that Donald Trump would not have won. The entire legal team at ABC and Disney disgraced themselves, along with the corporate chieftains of Disney's Magic Kingdom, in their acquiescence to Donald Trump in their settling a lawsuit that Donald Trump would not have won. CBS and ABC settled because they wanted to avoid discovery. Nevertheless, O’Donnell further mourned, “The lawyers did not have the courage to use their legal skills to fight Donald Trump's attempt to get money from this company. Donald Trump's illegal interference in their business. And so they paid them off.” He also lamented, “America has three legacy networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. They are our oldest networks, and two of them have handed over big, fat bribes to Donald Trump with the approval of the most cowardly corporate lawyers known to be currently working in America. Not one of those lawyers offered a principled resignation over the big fat bribe. Not one of them. We have seen lawyers publicly resigning from the Trump Justice Department on principle, from Washington to Minneapolis, but not one CBS lawyer, not one ABC lawyer.” The actual reason why CBS finds itself in this equal time predicament is because 214 out of Stephen Colbert’s 215 political guests from September 2022 to December 2025 have been liberals or Democrats. The one exception, Liz Cheney, was only barely an exception. With percentages over 99 percent, someone was eventually going to dust off the equal time rules. Here is a transcript for the February 17 show: MS NOW The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell 2/17/2026 10:05 PM ET LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Remember this about the CBS lawyers: they are the weakest, most cowardly corporate lawyers in America. They are actually in a tie with ABC's lawyers, who we will get to in a moment. The CBS lawyers who are now trying to tell Stephen Colbert, who can be a guest on his show, work for a parent company that agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit by Donald Trump against 60 Minutes, which Donald Trump had no chance of winning. Absolutely zero chance of winning. But those cowardly corporate lawyers agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million in what Stephen Colbert correctly called, quote, “a big, fat bribe.” Those lawyers should be witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the United States Senate right now, for that bribe. That is their filthy spot that they now occupy in American political and corporate legal history, right beside the ABC lawyers for their corporate parent, Disney, that agreed to pay Donald Trump $15 million in a frivolous lawsuit against ABC News, a lawsuit that Donald Trump would not have won. The entire legal team at ABC and Disney disgraced themselves, along with the corporate chieftains of Disney's Magic Kingdom, in their acquiescence to Donald Trump in their settling a lawsuit that Donald Trump would not have won. The lawyers did not have the courage to use their legal skills to fight Donald Trump's attempt to get money from this company. Donald Trump's illegal interference in their business. And so they paid them off. America has three legacy networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. They are our oldest networks, and two of them have handed over big, fat bribes to Donald Trump with the approval of the most cowardly corporate lawyers known to be currently working in America. Not one of those lawyers offered a principled resignation over the big fat bribe. Not one of them. We have seen lawyers publicly resigning from the Trump Justice Department on principle, from Washington to Minneapolis, but not one CBS lawyer, not one ABC lawyer. 

On Tuesday night, we saw the first crack in the figurative dam of bias by omission on the literal mountains of poop flowing into the Potomac River — which is now the largest sewage spill in U.S. history — with a full story on NBC Nightly News and then a news brief on Wednesday’s Today for a combined two minutes and 11 seconds, marking the first time any of the broadcast networks have mentioned the poo on the Poot-tomac. Though not included in the time count, Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas had a tease on the disaster, painting a brackish picture: “Potomac sewage disaster. Millions of gallons of waste spewing into the river. Now among the worst spills in U.S. history. How long will it take to clean up?” Later, Llamas tossed to longtime D.C. bureau-based correspondent Tom Costello by saying that, in Washington, there’s “one of the largest environmental disasters ever in this country” unfolding with “hundreds of millions of gallons of waste spilled into the Potomac.” WATCH: NBC Nightly News has broken the seal on reporting the Pootomac Disaster. And the report isn't Trumpwashed! pic.twitter.com/mfTZ7ck7p6 — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 18, 2026 Framing the Potomac as “[t]he river George Washington called the nation’s river,” Costello lamented it’s “off limits and contaminated after a 60-year-old sewage line in Maryland broke up last month, spewing more than 240,000 gallons of raw waste into the river,” which flows past major D.C. landmarks “and used by boaters, kayakers, high school and college rowing teams.” Costello took a walk down along the scene of the (stench) crime with Potomac Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks, who pointed out that, despite D.C. Water’s clean-up efforts, “you can see the toilet paper, and the sewage up on the banks.” Costello himself explained in a voice-over that the “environmental damage [is] staggering with e.coli levels more than 10,000 times above EPA quality standards at the time of the spill” and “health experts warn[ing] no one should be boating, fishing, or even touching the Potomac.” After noting “massive boulders that collapsed into the six-foot-wide pipe are delaying the repairs,” he only acknowledged the political back-and-forth between President Trump and Maryland Democrat Governor Wes Moore. But aside from that, his tone was rather matter of the fact (which it should be) (click “expand”): COSTELLO: But massive boulders that collapsed into the six-foot-wide pipe are delaying the repairs. Meanwhile, President Trump has blamed Maryland’s Democratic Governor Wes Moore for gross mismanagement while Moore fired back saying the pipe was federally built and regulated and the Trump EPA has been slow to respond. The fear now? The Potomac may not be safe for months. [TO NAUJOKS] You used to swim here? NAUJOKS: I swam right here. COSTELLO [TO NAUJOKS]: Would you swim in here again? NAUJOKS: Not for a while. COSTELLO: D.C. Water expects the repair to be done by mid-March, but overhauling the entire line could take at least nine months Fast-forward a few hours to Today and Hoda Kotb had a 28-second brief telling viewers about “a massive clean-up...underway in Washington, D.C. after hundreds of millions of gallons of waste spilled into the Potomac River.” WATCH: With a 28-second news brief Wednesday, NBC's @TodayShow was the first lead broadcast network (ABC/CBS/NBC) morning show to mention the Poo-astrophe on the Potomac pic.twitter.com/w3zwZdQ8bN — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 18, 2026 “It all started last month after a 60-year-old sewage line broke open in Maryland. The river left with e. coli levels more than 10,000 times above the EPA quality standards. Officials expect to have the immediate pair job done by mid-March, but overhauling the entire sewer line could take at least nine months,” she added There’s no question as to whether ABC and CBS are aware of this story. On Wednesday, the 10:00 a.m. Eastern hour of ABC News Live discussed it and, over on CBS News 24/7, the Poo-tomac came up once each on Monday and Tuesday then five times on Wednesday (as of this blog’s publication). Here was the segment in the noon Eastern hour from CBS White House reporter Olivia Rinaldi: Is the plunger that is bias by omission breaking through on the mountains of poo that's flowed into the Potomac? CBS News 24/7 has now covered five separate times on Wednesday (including here in the noon hour from @olivialarinaldi) after once each on Monday and Tuesday. Will we… pic.twitter.com/l1cVgC4nyK — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 18, 2026 In another sign the networks are finally starting to get the picture a month later, there were two White House reporters who brought it up on Wednesday afternoon to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. First, there was CBS’s Jennifer Jacobs: CBS’s @JenniferJJacobs: “And on the sewage spill, the sewage pipe that broke on the Potomac, can you give us an update on the federal government’s response? And officials have told CBS that some of that aging infrastructure is a concern that this particular pipe wasn't of the… pic.twitter.com/v0vl3FdTux — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 18, 2026 Fox’s Peter Doocy followed up, citing comments from Moore and then whether the President is worried that, as he’s been calling for “people from all over to come to the nation’s capital...the Potomac River will still smell like poop” come summertime: DOOCY TIME: “So, you that said any of the three Democrats just need to ask. A few minutes ago, Maryland Governor Wes Moore asked.”@PressSec @KarolineLeavitt: “Wow.”@PDoocy: “He said, ‘if the President wants me to ask nicely, the response is this. Please, Mr. President, do… pic.twitter.com/kWskJGS3n5 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 18, 2026 .@PDoocy: “To your point about that, there are a lot of events coming up for America 250. The president wants people from all over to come to the nation's capital. Is he worried that by this summer the Potomac River will still smell like poop?”@PressSec @KarolineLeavitt: “He is… pic.twitter.com/A4cIdHkUKW — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 18, 2026 To see the relevant NBC transcripts, click here (for February 17’s NBC Nightly News) and here (for NBC’s Today on February 18).

On Monday, ABC’s Good Morning America circled the drain of morality by gushing over former American Idol contestant David Archuleta’s new memoir and its thesis that, in order to truly “accept himself and embrace his sexuality,” he had to “lose his faith” in God and toxicity in the Mormon Church. It came as no surprise that Disney-owned ABC News has little interest in painting faith in God as a good thing given how the same newscast deceptively edited out on February 5 mentions of God, Jesus, and prayer from the first video by Savannah Guthrie and her siblings regarding the search for their missing mother. Filling in as co-host, chief White House correspondent and one-time Biden regime apple polisher Mary Bruce teased a segment with Archuleta explaining “how — his new memoir and — and how he had to lose his faith to find himself.” Monday's 'Good Morning America' celebrated David Archuleta's new memoir and gushed over the fact that he found happiness by ditching his belief in God and religion, specifically the Mormon Church pic.twitter.com/kSJXx5fHqr — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 16, 2026 She cued up correspondent Steve Osunsami to tell them more on Archuleta’s memoir “about growing up in the Mormon Church and how he learned to accept himself and embrace his sexuality.” Osunsami gushed the “book is as much a memoir as it is a story about healing and survival” with Archuleta “admitting to the fact that his struggles with sexuality and faith once led him to consider taking his own life,” but overcame it by realizing “the person who he’s learned to care about the most is himself.” “Singer David Archuleta says he started writing his new book after one of his concerts when he was approached by a gay fan who reminded him of his younger self, a young man who was Mormon and who was struggling to come out to his family,” he added. The conversation focused on his disgust with Mormonism and his father (click “expand”): OSUNSAMI: In his new memoir Devout, the now 35-year-old shares his journey from his childhood in the Mormon Church to his teenage years on American Idol to his recent exit from the church after revealing to the world that he is now dating men. ARCHULETA: I was so devout to my religion. I was so devout to the authority figures in my life. I was constantly seeking their approval. OSUNSAMI: One of those people was his father, who in his book says would belittle him and who had a reputation around Hollywood as a difficult stage dad. [TO ARCHULETA] How hard was it for you to write about your father’s role in all of this? ARCHULETA: It was difficult because I — I think I’ve looked at him so often as, like, a threat to my peace. I was still seeing things through the eyes of my younger self, and the way that I’d coped and, like, moved on from it was simply just cutting it off, blocking it out, even though I’m in my mid-thirties now. I — I would revert back to being a child and being afraid like I was as a kid. I’m like, why — why is — why is this happening? OSUNSAMI: At the same time, he says it was his same father who changed his life, surprising him with tickets to the finale of the first season of American Idol and encouraging him to sing here right after the show in front of cameras from Good Morning America. He was just 11 years old. ARCHULETA: Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. It helped spark a dream in me. And I think that’s where it was helpful to have my dad say, yes you can, even though I hated him for it, and we butt heads so much, and I was afraid of him. OSUNSAMI: His father told People magazine that “I love my son with all my heart” and doesn’t believe he was abusive, saying that “I’ve never felt like that was the case...I think a lot of times intention can be misinterpreted.” ARCHULETA: I was angry at myself, I was angry at my dad, but I feel like I channeled that into a healthy way to say no more. Enough. And when I came out, all he said was, David, I’m proud of you and keep it, keep doing what you’re doing. It — it meant so much. Like, it was healing for me. Asked to explain where he currently stands in his faith, Archuleta gave the most generic liberal, irreligious answer: I don’t consider myself religious now because if that’s what you say God is, then I don’t want that. But I believe that there’s something divine and something universal that connects all of us together. That’s why I wrote this book, that’s why I sing, because I wanted to connect to everything around me. Osusami concluded with more lamentations: “For so many years, he says the Mormon Church put him on a pedestal. He says all that began to change when he began to realize who he really is. He says he’s willing to continue conversations with the Church if indeed the goal is to bring more of God’s children into the fold.” Bruce responded this was “such a powerful and important message...for so many who may be struggling as well.” Exit question: Would ABC ever be caught doing a story painting Islam as judgy and anti-gay? To see the relevant ABC transcript from February 17, click here.

On Wednesday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish and her panel managed to recast enforcement of federal civil rights law under Donald Trump as “enforcing ideology,” while a Democratic consultant insisted that DEI “was never a problem” until Trump took office. The segment opened with archival footage of Jesse Jackson defending boycotts, including the recent effort to intimidate Target after the retailer scaled back "diversity, equity, and inclusion" initiatives following Trump’s reelection. Cornish noted that Target’s CEO has acknowledged financial effects from the leftist boycott. The more revealing moment came later, during discussion of Trump’s State of the Union vow to end DEI policies across the federal government and, indirectly, the private sector. On "CNN This Morning," anchor Audie Cornish claimed under Trump, "the actual government now is involved in enforcing a different ideology" on race. Democrat Antjuan Seawright lamented “DEI was never a problem until Trump became President of the United States.” pic.twitter.com/w7c8O0f0YJ — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) February 18, 2026 After airing remarks from current Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas defending equal protection principles, Cornish framed the issue this way: “What it means is the actual government now is involved in enforcing a different ideology, so to speak.” No. It means the federal government is enforcing the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race. For decades, debates over affirmative action and race-conscious hiring have centered on whether certain DEI-style practices cross that legal line. That argument did not begin in 2016 — much less in 2025. Some would start with the Supreme Court ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978. Yet Democratic consultant Antjuan Seawright went further, claiming: “DEI was never a problem until Trump became President of the United States.” Really? California voters banned affirmative action at public institutions in 1996.  And just last year — during Joe Biden’s presidency — the Court ruled against race-conscious admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. On CNN, however, longstanding constitutional and legal disputes are recast as sudden culture-war inventions. Seawright also suggested that scaling back DEI resurrects an old injustice, invoking “this idea that black folks should always be on the menu and never at the table.” Opposing DEI makes you a cannibal? The metaphor implies that retreating from race-conscious corporate policies amounts to a return to exclusion.  Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, offered the clearest counterargument: civil rights law was designed to "tear down" racial barriers, not replace one form of racial preference with another. For CNN, insisting that Americans be judged without regard to race is now the intolerably ideological position.

New York Times climate-policy reporter Lisa Friedman explains her beat as covering “how our warming planet affects vulnerable communities and to understand the economic and political challenges involved in curbing greenhouse gases.” In other words, her beat is all about forcing politicians to respond to an alleged "crisis." So there was outrage when President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the dubious Obama-era Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which “served as a prerequisite for regulating emissions from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines.” Friedman embellished the whole affair to make it make Trump out to be the enemy of Mother Earth in a February 12 screed: “Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change.” Friedman began: President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather. Led by a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research shows it to be. Science vs. Trump. It wouldn't be the first time they drew this cartoon. On Wednesday, the anti-Trump headline of choice was "As Trump Obliterates Climate Efforts, States Try to Fill the Gap." Friedman's rant, of course, was completely false in presenting Science as unanimous, as American Compass managing editor Drew Holden pointed out on X: “This is it. The worst legacy media headline I’ve ever seen. A blatant lie. A deeply political issue. Entirely lacking context (‘bedrock’ for something passed in 2009!). World-is-ending alarmism. Trump derangement. Nails everything wrong w/ the press.” The “endangerment finding” effectively gave the EPA carte blanche authority to impose sweeping restrictions on the economy based on arbitrary assessments of dangers to public health, regardless of harms to economic stability. As former Heritage Foundation Scholars Kevin Dayaratna and Diana Furchtgott-Roth summarized in a July 30, 2025 report, the EPA’s "endangerment finding” was “based largely on studies compiled by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rather than on its own scientific assessments.” As Holden concluded, all repealing the "endangerment finding" will do is "stop unelected bureaucrats from using climate change as a catchall to shape policy in harmful ways." Somehow lost on the Times is that overturning this regulation will absolutely not “erase the governments power to fight climate change.” All it will do is stop unelected bureaucrats from using climate change as a catchall to shape policy in harmful ways. pic.twitter.com/b6NfxnttOF — Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) February 17, 2026 But Friedman, true to the Times brand, falsely stated that “For nearly 17 years, the E.P.A. had relied on the bedrock finding to justify regulations that limit carbon dioxide, methane and other pollution from oil and gas wells, tailpipes, smokestacks and other sources that burn fossil fuels?” Whose “bedrock finding” was it, Friedman? She doesn’t clearly say.  The assertion that "the vast majority of scientists" support drastic government action is a lie, as EPA administrator Lee Zeldin argued in an X-post targeting another Times piece battering the Trump administration along Friedman’s logic. “EPA’s vehicle standards for criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants remain. The objective here is to dumb down the Times’ readers as much as possible with absolute lies,” Zeldin rebuked.  As Dayaratna and Furchtgott-Roth reported, there is “No Scientific Consensus on CO₂ Harm.” Friedman’s reasoning is likely based on the phony notion that 97 percent of scientists have reached consensus on man-made climate change. But Dayaratna and Furchtgott-Roth obliterated that claim: The misleading figure stems from a 2013 study in Environmental Research Letters that examines the abstracts of nearly 12,000 academic papers on climate change and global warming between 1991 and 2011. Of those papers, 66.4 percent did not express an opinion on anthropogenic warming, 32.6 percent endorsed it, 0.7 percent rejected it, and 0.3 percent were uncertain about the cause. Among the 33.6 percent expressing an opinion on man-made global warming, ‘97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming’ without commenting on danger or urgency. That is about a third of the total polled, not 97 percent. And that's certainly not a “majority,” as Friedman insinuated. In fact, Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett suggested that the finding was itself potentially illegal under the Clean Air Act. “Concerning the scientific basis of the endangerment finding, from the outset it was clear carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) did not qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act (CAA) as written or intended by Congress,” Burnett argued on September 23, 2025.  And of course, Friedman and her Times climate-activist caucus don't want to focus on the economic benefits of eliminating the endangerment finding, as the New York Post outlined February 12. “An economic impact analysis released Thursday night said the $1.3 trillion in savings [from eliminating the ‘endangerment finding’] included $1.1 trillion in reduced vehicle costs and $200 billion in avoided electric vehicle expenses, including chargers and other equipment.” But Friedman simply dismissed the overarching number by kvetching that the Trump administration “has declined to explain how it arrived at that estimate.”  Perhaps Friedman should have waited to read the EPA’s economic impact analysis to be released the same day of her report, er, agitprop? Oh well.