On Friday morning, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee played politics, releasing 19 photos from the Epstein estate, including several featuring Donald Trump, long before he was President, pictured with various women. Bill Clinton, the former Prince Andrew, Woody Allen, Bill Gates, ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon and billionaire Richard Branson were also featured in the photos selected for release, but as the Democrats probably expected, the media focus was on Trump, and on Friday evening's edition of CNN's The Source, host Kaitlan Collins didn't disappoint them. In two of the photos, the women posing with Trump had their faces redacted, including six in one photo. A third one showing Trump with Belgian model Ingrid Seynhaeve in 1997 had previously been published. There was also a picture of  Trump on what looks like the wrapper of a condom that says, "I'm HUUUUGE." The photos prove absolutely nothing, as even Collins acknowledged early on: "None of the men that you're about to see are accused of wrongdoing. That's important to note, but Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released these pictures from Jeffrey Epstein's estate, citing the need for transparency." That may be their stated reason, but it doesn't force Collins or anyone else to give the photos the same gravitas and coverage, they would deserve had they revealed something, anything at all.   Collins brought on the Ranking Member on the House Committee, California Democrat Robert Garcia, who did not directly answer the key question. COLLINS: One thing that the Republicans on your committee have accused you of, and the White House as well is cherry-picking certain pictures, they say, to form a narrative here. How did you decide which pictures in the 95,000 that you now have access to, how did you decide which ones to release today? GARCIA: I think it's interesting that Republicans like to make these arguments, when they have yet to call on President Trump, in a strong way, to release all the files. They wanted to conceal the files. They wanted to oppose our subpoena. They tried everything they could to stop our vote in the Congress to actually get the files released.  Collins should have interrupted at that point and remind viewers of the fact that the House voted 427-1 to release all Epstein files and President Trump signed that bill on November 19, 2025. Instead he was allowed to continue. GARCIA: Our goal is to get everything that we can release out to the public. And some of what was sent to us in this documentation is also quite disturbing... COLLINS: When you say it's disturbing, can you explain why? GARCIA: What I can say is Jeffrey Epstein was clearly a sick person, a horrible sex trafficker. And so was Ghislaine Maxwell. Like I said earlier, the photos are disturbing... And our hope is to be able to get the information about what is included in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos that have been released by the Epstein estate, some very disturbing of women and their conditions.. COLLINS: Well, I mean, wow. I mean, it sounds like you're saying there's potentially images of women being assaulted or in sexual acts. GARCIA: I think what I would say is that there are very disturbing photos...  Like the released photos, an answer designed to make viewers think the worst, and link it all to the biggest name in the photos, Donald Trump. A point that wasn't lost on CNN commentator Scott Jennings.   JENNINGS: Look, here's what I think. Robert Garcia and the Democrats on Oversight, don't care about justice. They don't care about victims. They don't care about anything except one thing. They care about making the American public think that Donald Trump had something to do with this.... They should be patient. If they cared about victims, and they cared about a narrative of justice, and they cared about that part of it, they would be patient, they would be measured. But what did they do today? They released photos that are cherry- picked, by the way, and they throw in an already publicly-released photo of Donald Trump. They blur out the pictures of the women to make you think that these women were underage sex victims. When, in fact, they were very adult. They were at an event. It's already a publicly released photo. And one of the women said, on the record, oh, Donald Trump was gentlemanly. So, what the Democrats are doing here is they're taking a very serious story, in which real people got hurt, by powerful people, all for the purpose of trying to smear Donald Trump. That's what this has always been about. They didn't care about it until now. And what they're doing with these photos is nothing short of outrageous. This is not a story about Trump and Epstein...This is a story about Epstein. But they want it to be about Trump...and honestly, it is crazy... Crazy indeed, and at this point, a non-story with Donald Trump as its fictional main character. 

This could qualify as the tiniest Trump scandal of all time -- even smaller than they "Trump dumped all the fish food in the koi pond" scandal. It's a FONT scandal. NBC News thought this was hot-buns news from the Department of State: This is a real headline from NBC News. pic.twitter.com/s7m4JNXO6z — Media Research Center (@theMRC) December 11, 2025 That's right: we're supposed be outraged by this: "Calibri font is the latest casualty in the Trump administration's war on diversity and inclusion." Admission of guilt: I use Calibri font constantly as I write up articles. I don't remember anyone on the right railing against Calibri font.  Alexandra Marquez and Abigail Williams lamely tried to make this grand: It’s the rise of the Roman Empire at the U.S. State Department — Times New Roman, that is. In a memo to the department on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed U.S. diplomats worldwide to use Times New Roman 14-point font for official documents, reversing a Biden-era directive to use Calibri. The memo, titled “Return to Tradition,” said that the new standard font would “reflect the same dignity, consistency, and formality expected in official government correspondence.” Times New Roman 14, a serif font, had been the State Department standard since 2004, but in 2023, the agency switched to Calibri, a sans serif typeface, at the recommendation of the Secretary’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion to mitigate accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities. With a sans serif typeface, the letters do not include tails and wings on their edges as serif typefaces do. I fail to see any real importance in whether your font has “tails and wings.” But Rubio’s memo claimed  “Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence.” To NBC, switching fonts back was like slapping Martin Luther King's memory into a wall: The move comes amid a wider push by the Trump administration against diversity, equity and inclusion programs that were embraced by the Biden administration. Last week, the Interior Department unveiled next year’s “fee-free days” at the nation’s national parks, removing several holidays — including Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January and Juneteenth in June — that were previously included on the “fee-free” calendar. Then it became more ridiculous: JustMindy at Twitchy flagged Steve Herman, a former White House reporter for the supposedly objective Voice of America, compared this to the Nazis:  The Nazis, in 1941, banned the Fraktur font because it was “too Jewish.” Could there be a possibility that there is anything Team Trump does that can't be compared to the Nazis? 

Well that didn’t take long. Americans were barely done polishing off the Thanksgiving turkey left-overs when various media outlets began targeting, of all things, Christmas. Apparently, this is clickbait. Here are more than a few samples you can find: Business Insider:  25 reasons why Christmas can be the worst time of year  Good Housekeeping:  Why Do Some People Hate Christmas? It's Actually More Common Than You Think Newsweek:  Why Christmas Might Not Feel Like Magic Anymore—But It’s Not Your Fault The New Republic:  Why I Hate Christmas The Grinch has it right. Odyssey:  9 Reasons Why I Don't Like Christmas, And That's Fine With Me I just really don't like holidays. Sue me. I guess I'm a Grinch. Metro:  13 reasons why Christmas is officially the worst day of the year Ranker:  All The Reasons Christmas Is Actually A Far More Horrifying Holiday Than Halloween  The Top Tens:  Top 10 Worst Things About Christmas Christmas is a great holiday, but there are definitely some strange and frustrating aspects to it.  Christianity:  Is it a Sin to Hate Christmas? What Does the Bible Say? Many Christians decry the commercialization or secularization of the holiday today, a far cry from the original story and meaning. But is it a sin to hate Christmas? Mind Journal:  “I Hate Christmas” – 6 Reasons Why Some People Hate The Holiday Season One could go on-and on and on and on, with similar examples out there from the seemingly endless pool of “hating Christmas” stories in the media. There was a time -- as hard as it may be to realize -- when the Internet didn’t exist. No one other than Charles Dickens’ beloved (and fictional!) character Ebenezer Scrooge seems to have been the only person out there who quite decidedly hated Christmas. With Scrooge famously dismissing it with scornful repetitions of “Bah! Humbug” And thanks to three Christmas ghosts even old Scrooge finally came around! But now, as is evidenced in those unlimited stories about hating Christmas, today’s media is all too quick to get into the Scrooge-like “I hate Christmas” spirit. The trouble with this is that as little boys and girls start growing up and find themselves swimming in a sea of “I hate Christmas” media stories some -- maybe much more than some -- will begin to believe these stories are not only reality but that they should be reality.  With Christianity itself beginning to fade as "the reason for the season," Christmas can sound more like let-it-snow winter festival than a celebration of the birth of Christ. Alas, no one has a crystal ball on something like this. But as it is at this moment, there is a serious media cavalcade out there annually pushing negative stories about Christmas. Not good. Not good at all.  But Merry Christmas!

The Atlantic staff writer and podcaster David Frum brought out his tinfoil hat on Friday when he joined MS NOW’s Deadline: White House when he suggested that President Trump could arrest people to prevent them from voting in next year’s midterms. Of course, guest host Ali Velshi decided to echo those conspiracy theories instead of pushing back on them, while Prof. Basil Smikle warned Trump will try to find a way to “nationalize voter suppression.” Frum declared that Trump “will do anything” to win and wondered, “One of the things that the Supreme Court has authorized is the brief detention of American citizens to check that they are indeed American citizens, brief detention. How brief is brief? Can you arrest them at 3:00 in the afternoon and hold them 'til after the polls close? Is that brief?     Claiming that the Supreme Court has authorized brief detentions of American citizens is a funny way of saying it acknowledged that just because mistakes happen during ICE operations does not mean they are illegal or unconstitutional. However, Frum kept rolling: Can you put troops on the streets in marginal areas in an effort to intimidate people who maybe have a member of their family who has a doubtful immigration status and don't want to risk any kind of encounter with the police? Can you, aside from gerrymandering, can you do other kinds of things that are at the margin of the law to shape the electorate in such a way that it's more favorable? Now, in the face of the kind of massive public discontent that seems to be brewing in the country, none of this may be enough, but when a dirty trick is the only trick you have, the dirty trick becomes your entire repertoire. Velshi then turned to Smikle by encouraging Frum’s delusions, “Basil, this is important because, and by the way, they're probably instructions, we can talk about this for the next several months about, ‘Okay, if you think you're at risk of being detained for a few hours,’ as I am a man of a certain color in New York, ‘better vote early,’ so that I've got that chance. But that's an interesting point that David makes. If dirty tricks are all that's left, you're going to put all your energy into the dirty tricks.” Smikle tried to wax poetic about voting and activism in the midst of such alleged danger, “I was glad to see Pete Buttigieg at the top when you introduced all of us because he speaks about this really eloquently, that it was important for Americans to believe that they have agency in this, that they can actually fight back. You can put your hope and trust in the courts and that's one thing. But being able to go out on the street, being able to go push back and lobby, because what the president will do is find a way to nationalize voter suppression. They will do that. They are doing that now.” A few years ago, after Georgia’s voting law did not suppress the vote like liberals on MSNBC said it would, they responded by claiming that voter enthusiasm was just so high that they overcame the nefarious efforts. Frum, Velshi, and Smikle are setting up their audience to do the same thing. They will not admit they were wrong, they will simply claim, “Heads I win, tails you lose.” The only thing that will have changed is the network rebrand. Here is a transcript for the December 12 show: MS NOW Deadline: White House 12/12/2025 5:13 PM ET DAVID FRUM: So he will do anything. And we—I talked on my podcast this week with Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center—he might do, you know, one of the things that the Supreme Court has authorized is the brief detention of American citizens to check that they are indeed American citizens, brief detention. How brief is brief? Can you arrest them at 3:00 in the afternoon and hold them ‘til after the polls close? Is that brief? Can you put troops on the streets in marginal areas in an effort to intimidate people who maybe have a member of their family who has a doubtful immigration status and don't want to risk any kind of encounter with the police? Can you, aside from gerrymandering, can you do other kinds of things that are at the margin of the law to shape the electorate in such a way that it's more favorable? Now, in the face of the kind of massive public discontent that seems to be brewing in the country, none of this may be enough, but when a dirty trick is the only trick you have— ALI VELSHI: Yeah. FRUM:—the dirty trick becomes your entire repertoire. VELSHI: Basil, this is important because, and by the way, they're probably instructions, we can talk about this for the next several months about, “Okay, if you think you're at risk of being detained for a few hours," as I am a man of a certain color in New York BASIL SMIKLE: Yes. VELSHI: —"better vote early," so that I've got that chance. But that's an interesting point that David makes. If dirty tricks are all that's left, you're going to put all your energy into the dirty tricks. SMIKLE: And we should not expect that would ever be— that it would ever be held up, right? He's going to continue to do that because that's his go to, that's his—what he perceives as his strength. And that's why I actually was really important. I was glad to see Pete Buttigieg at the top when you introduced all of us because he speaks about this really eloquently, that it was important for Americans to believe that they have agency in this, that they can actually fight back. You can put your hope and trust in the courts and that's one thing. But being able to go out on the street, being able to go push back and lobby, because what the president will do is find a way to nationalize voter suppression. They will do that. They are doing that now. The question then becomes, how do we push back? And I think state to state, whether it's a party issue or it's the nonprofits that are involved in this, people do have the agency to actually push this back and remind people that in the carrot and stick approach, that stick can come in the form of your citizenship, your right to be here, being challenged when you get into your car and drive out of your house, or being chased into your house in pursuit of those that kind of information. And I think when we see those kinds of videos, it's like, ‘Well, wait a minute, I signed up for some things, but I didn't sign up for this.

The trio of PBS News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz, New York Times columnist David Brooks, and MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart assembled on Friday to attack President Trump for allegedly using “overtly racist rhetoric” at a recent speech, but nobody cared to actually specify what they found so objectionable. Nawaz, who just won a Walter Cronkite Award for supposedly being able to bring diverse viewpoints to the show, began with Brooks and rattled off a list of things she considered setbacks for the administration before turning the speech, “At the same time, we're seeing a ramping up of the president's overtly racist rhetoric. That affordability speech in Pennsylvania just devolved into an anti-immigrant, racist rant. David, are those things related?” Trump said many things in that speech, but two things he brought up that nobody at PBS wanted to talk about were the Somali welfare fraud scandal rocking Minnesota and the fact that Rep. Ilhan Omar “does nothing but bitch. She's always complaining.” The welfare fraud scandal is real, and even if one wants to demand presidents use G-rated language in public, it is still true that Omar is always complaining and running down the country that granted her asylum—not to mention her frequent descents into anti-Semitism.     As for Brooks, he replied, “Unclear. It could be just he's getting crankier and older. He's not — he's always talked about certain kind of countries when referring to certain developing world countries. That was first term. He's always used this kind of language. Is he using it more nastily? Yes. Is it tied to his falling approvals? I'm not sure.” Brooks then referenced the recently released National Security Strategy, “This is taking some of that idea that we're — we in the West have to fight off the hordes from the rest of the world. That's not only in a speech. That is the official foreign policy of the United States of America. And so that culture war mind-set is now from maybe back of mind or medium of mind, now it's front of mind, both in random rhetoric, but also in policy.” Capehart lamented, “I don't think it's random rhetoric. This is something that the president has done time and time again, when he was running for president the first time, when he became president, when he ran for president, especially the second time. And now that he's president a second time, it is right there.” He also claimed, “And when we have seen him go all in on racist rhetoric, it's when he's trying to scratch at that itch, that emotional, fearful itch to get people, I think, to get away from affordability and what's happening to them in their budgets and their pocketbooks, and get them to fearing and being afraid of their neighbors, being afraid of people around them as just a distraction.” Capehart concluded by insisting that “I think the more we talk about it, the more we shine light on it, the more we don't let him get away with saying what he said in Scranton. I think the better it is for all of us. It's not easy to hear the president of the United States say the things that he's been saying, not just in Scranton, but during this presidency. We have to hold a mirror up to him just so that we are forced to contend with what he's saying.” In that case, “we” should also look at his claim that immigration without assimilation is destined to end badly, but again, nobody at PBS wanted to discuss that. Here is a transcript for the December 12 show: PBS News Hour 12/12/2025 7:50 PM ET AMNA NAWAZ: At the same time, we're seeing a ramping up of the president's overtly racist rhetoric. That affordability speech in Pennsylvania just devolved into an anti-immigrant, racist rant. David, are those things related? DAVID BROOKS: Unclear. It could be just he's getting crankier and older. He's not — he's always talked about certain kind of countries when referring to certain developing world countries. That was first term. He's always used this kind of language. Is he using it more nastily? Yes. Is it tied to his falling approvals? I'm not sure. I think there's been a shift in the mind-set of the administration compared to Trump One. And we saw it not only in what he says in some random speech. We saw it in the most important event of the week, which was the release of the national security strategy, where they talked about civilizational erasure. This is taking some of that idea that we're — we in the West have to fight off the hordes from the rest of the world. That's not only in a speech. That is the official foreign policy of the United States of America. And so that culture war mind-set is now from maybe back of mind or medium of mind, now it's front of mind, both in random rhetoric, but also in policy. JONATHAN CAPEHART: I don't think it's random rhetoric. This is something that the president has done time and time again, when he was running for president the first time, when he became president, when he ran for president, especially the second time. And now that he's president a second time, it is right there. And when we have seen him go all in on racist rhetoric, it's when he's trying to scratch at that itch, that emotional, fearful itch to get people, I think, to get away from affordability and what's happening to them in their budgets and their pocketbooks, and get them to fearing and being afraid of their neighbors, being afraid of people around them as just a distraction. And I think the more we talk about it, the more we shine light on it, the more we don't let him get away with saying what he said in Scranton. I think the better it is for all of us. It's not easy to hear the president of the United States say the things that he's been saying, not just in Scranton, but during this presidency. We have to hold a mirror up to him just so that we are forced to contend with what he's saying.