The other shoe has dropped on the ongoing wrap-up smear of FBI Director Kash Patel. The original item published in The Atlantic drew its initial round of Elitist Media coverage. Now, an additional round due to Congressional hearings on the article, setting Patel up to be grilled regarding the allegations. With anchor Tom Llamas being the first to arrive to China to cover the Trump-Xi summit, there was related coverage that bumped the hearings off the Nightly News. ABC and CBS, anchored by fill-ins as David Muir and Tony Dokoupil make their way to Beijing, were all too eager to wallow in the mud. ABC’s Jay O’Brien literally worked “pounding beers” into his coverage of the hearing: DRINKING GAME: Part II of the wrap-up smear of Kash Patel ran today. Here's ABC's Jay O'Brien, literally working "pounding beers" into his report on today's hearing pic.twitter.com/Q7dDFcs2fH — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 13, 2026 ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT 5/12/26 6:41 PM JAY O’BRIEN (shouted at Kash Patel): Do you still have the confidence of the president? Tonight, the fireworks on Capitol Hill. FBI Director Kash Patel grilled by Democrats about reports he has a drinking problem. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Episodes of excessive drinking, unexplained absences, and behavior that concerned current and former FBI and DoJ officials. (VIDEO SWIPE) Is it your testimony that those allegations are categorically false? KASH PATEL: Unequivocally, categorically false. (VIDEO SWIPE) VAN HOLLEN: And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you. Is that right?  PATEL: Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff but it doesn't make it credible because you say so. VAN HOLLEN: I'm not saying it, Director Patel, it's been written and documented. PATEL: You are literally saying it. VAN HOLLEN: No, I’m saying that these are reports, Director Patel. O’BRIEN: Patel drawing scrutiny after he was seen celebrating and pounding beers at the Olympics with the USA men's hockey team. The director insists he was in Milan on separate official business. He's now suing The Atlantic magazine after it reported on alleged bouts of excessive drinking. The CBS Evening News wasn’t much better than ABC, dutifully pushing out the smear: CBS runs Part II of the wrap-up smear against Kash Patel. Here's Chris Van Hollen saying "it's written...", a key element of the wrap-up smear (originally published in The Atlantic) pic.twitter.com/gKLAaiqToA — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 13, 2026 CBS EVENING NEWS 5/12/26 6:41 PM CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: You cannot perform those public duties if you are incapacitated. CAITLIN HUEY-BURNS: Democrats grilled FBI Director Kash Patel about claims made in a recent "Atlantic" magazine article, including allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences. VAN HOLLEN: And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you, is that right? KASH PATEL: Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff but it doesn't make it credible because you say so. VAN HOLLEN: I'm not saying it, Director Patel, it's been written and documented. PATEL: You are literally saying it. HUEY-BURNS: Patel denies the claims. His personal behavior has been heavily scrutinized since he was seen drinking with the men's Olympic hockey team in Italy, and after a report that he gives out personalized bourbon bottles engraved with his name and title. As we noted when the networks initially jumped all over the unproven allegations published in The Atlantic: The Atlantic has a history of running Trump-deranged fiction that won’t play anywhere else. The most notorious example of this genre is the despicable Suckers and Losers Hoax. Patel’s defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic will endure as a story long after this operation fades from the headlines. Meanwhile, the Elitist Media continue to remind us why trust in media is at an all-time low. The fiction remains unproven, but it still has political use, as is demonstrated here by ABC and CBS.  

Last Friday, leftist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appeared at a University of Chicago's Institute of Politics event, where she left open her political options, while stating, "My ambition is to change this country." She didn't hold back spewing her radical views, which has led to the left wing media raising the pedestal that she had already been placed on, and that was on full display Monday on CNN's State of the Union, while in contrast, Fox News's Hannity called AOC out for what she is. CNN Host Dana Bash asked, "What does Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to do next? She could stay in the House, challenge Chuck Schumer in the Senate, or run for President." She then played a clip of AOC. AOC CLIP: They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat, and my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but, single payer health care is forever. A living wage is forever. Worker's rights are forever. Women's rights, all of that. Sounds like a desire to be Queen of socialism. First to weigh in was CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju, who seemed optimistic about most of the possibilities in the Congresswoman's future.  RAJU: If she ran in the Senate in 2028, she would have a very good chance of defeating Chuck Schumer in a Democratic primary. .... But can she win a general election? She could win a primary, potentially in a presidential race in 2028. She's got the energy. She's got social media following. She can raise money. But a general election. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, totally different question. Bash then turned to Semafor White House Correspondent Shelby Talcott, "I totally agree with all of those points [from Raju]. The question is, what is she trying to say?" TALCOTT: I think she's talking about the direction that the Democratic Party should be going to. She's talking about here are the policies that our party should stand for. When I talk to people close to the President and Republicans about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and those comments, they're hoping that she ends up running for president because their belief is that she is too much of a progressive for the Democratic Party and will bring them down a path that will ensure another Republican victory. After CNN Senior Politics Reporter Stephen Collinson wondered if AOC could benefit from serving in the Senate before any Presidential run, Bash responded, "It worked out okay for a guy named Barack Obama." He was in the Senate for about two years before the presidential run began.  Was Bash actually equating AOC with Barack Obama on any level? Does she believe their IQ's are close? Let's hope not, for her sake.  The only doubts expressed on this segment about AOC, was in her ability to appeal to the masses in an actual presidential election. Of course no mention was made about what else she claimed on Friday, for the third time, that the American Revolution was against. "the billionaires of their time." Talk about IQ. They never mentioned her providing tips to illegals on how to evade ICE, or stating that marginalized communities 'have no choice but to riot', or that her district has seen an enormous increase in crime. Of course not. Later that evening on Fox News, Host Sean Hannity unveiled a completely different AOC than the one the CNN crew was talking about. HANNITY:  The true leader of the radicalized Democratic Party, AOC, continues to demonize wealthy job-creating taxpayers. How many times have I said I never got a job from a poor person? She is going so far as to claim the Revolutionary War was fought against the billionaires of their time. Wasn't about freedom, wasn't about independence. No. Taxation without representation, if you learned that you went to a real school, she obviously did not. Hannity did actually play the American Revolution clip. AOC CLIP: The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. We are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power. HANNITY: Exhibit A on how government schools are so disgraceful and such a failure, but even worse than that, she also said her ambition goes way beyond just becoming president one day. Essentially saying she wants to instill her communist vision in this country. Remember, every elected Democrat, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Mamdani, Kathy Hochul, probably even Gavin Newsom, all fear her. The difference in segments was the difference between the truth and fake news by omission.

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, former MSNBC host Chris Matthews acknowledged Iran has always used the “help of American media” to peddle images of war back to the American audience to hurt the opinions of American presidents, including his former boss, President Jimmy Carter, amid the Iranian hostage crisis. But, of course, Matthews helped peddle that same Iranian propaganda further in their discussion as he said any future U.S. military actions in Iran would be “war crimes.” Morning Joe regular Mike Barnicle asked Matthews about the experience with Iranians amid the Carter hostage crisis. “Iranians seem to have been playing their tune for us, and we've been going along with it for a long, long time,” Barnicle said.   On Morning Joe, Chris Matthews said the Iranians get "the help of the American Media," as he compared the current coverage of the Iran War to the Iranian Hostage Crisis under Jimmy Carter, whom Matthews worked for. Of course, after saying that, Matthews echoed war crime claims. pic.twitter.com/3PaLtVvKph — Nick (@nspin310) May 12, 2026   Matthews followed with a story of the 1980 presidential campaign amid the crisis. He recounted that there was a moment in the campaign when it seemed the Iranian mullahs might release the hostages, but they were “tricked.” He then remembered the coverage by Walter Cronkite as he started to allude to media coverage of Iran in that crisis as a comparison: The ayatollah and all that gang knew they were going to screw Carter one more time. And so the day before the 1980 election, Walter Cronkite led with the hostage crisis anniversary. It wasn't even the next election the next day, it was the anniversary of the hostage taking. And American held hostage was on every night at 11:30. It never stopped. Then, Matthews recalled the coverage then as the Iranians hurting Carter, with “the help of American media”:  They kept the heat on him in the media, day after day after day, with the help of the American media, and he could never get past it. So, I look at Trump and what he's facing right now when you talked about this morning, and these options aren't there. What Matthews discussed in terms of American media around 1980 was very similar to coverage today, in the media’s usage of Iranian State Media as primary sources, as seen on CNN and other mainstream networks. Just as he talked about the media, he echoed a constant Democrat and media talking point of war crimes:  You can't go back and start committing war crimes, attacking power plants and desalination facilities, and all that. You can't do that. You're going to start killing people, and it's going to be all over the news. And guess how we're going to know about it? The Iranians will make sure we'll know about every girl’s school that gets hit, every hospital that's hit, everything we do wrong, every war crime that looks like a war crime, we'll know all about it because they're really good at this. After Jonathan Lemire and Joe Scarborough talked about Iranian A.I. LEGO propaganda memes, Matthews joined back in and feared of a girls’ school being hit among other war action:  If we do that again, and we will do that again, if we start doing saturation bombing and we start hitting critical facilities that affect people's lives, we're going to get into killing people. And I think Trump must know that.  Even after Chris Matthews illustrated how Iranians manipulate U.S. media, Matthews and the Morning Joe crew proceeded to demonstrate it firsthand. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Morning Joe May 12, 2026 7:08:34 AM Eastern (...) MIKE BARNICLE: Chris, listening to David and listening to the conversations that have been taking place here this morning around the table about Iran, and for the past couple of weeks about Iran. Let's talk about another president, a president who you served, Jimmy Carter. And let's talk about the hostage taking by the Iranians.  The Iranians seem to have been playing their tune for us, and we've been going along with it for a long, long time.  CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, I was listening to Joe yesterday morning, and I was thrown back 46 years, almost a half a century, to being on Air Force One with President Carter on the Saturday before the election of 1980.  And of course, we went to - back in those days, we were still, Democrats were still trying to get Texas. We spent five different stops at the airports. We have 10,000 people waiting for you at the airport, in the stands there. And we went all through Texas the day before, and that, on Saturday. Then we went to Milwaukee late that night, and then we - Carter threw on an Italian sports heroes program about midnight because Marty Russo, the congressman, got him to do that. And then at two in the morning, Hamilton Jordan showed up in Chicago to say, “the mullahs are voting. It looks like there might be a chance we'll get the hostages back before the election.”  And there it was, an opportunity. We flew back to Washington. And, once again, the mullahs tricked us. The ayatollah and all that gang knew they were going to screw Carter one more time. And so the day before the 1980 election, Walter Cronkite led with the hostage crisis anniversary. It wasn't even the next election the next day, it was the anniversary of the hostage taking. And American held hostage was on every night at 11:30. It never stopped.  The Iranians knew exactly how to screw Carter. They kept the heat on him in the media, day after day after day, with the help of the American media, and he could never get past it. So, I look at Trump and what he's facing right now when you talked about this morning,, and these options aren't there.  You can't go back and start committing war crimes, attacking power plants and desalination facilities, and all that. You can't do that. You're going to start killing people, and it's going to be all over the news. And guess how we're going to know about it? The Iranians will make sure we'll know about every girls school that gets hit, every hospital that's hit, everything we do wrong, every war crime that looks like a war crime, we'll know all about it because they're really good at this, Mike.  They really keep up with our media and how to screw an American president, and they're going to do it again. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, and let's compare what happened in 79 and 80. They would always make sure, and Chris talked about this before when he was here, and always make sure they would burn an American flag in front of American television cameras to make sure that American flag being burned would be shown in the United States, make the president look even weaker. They would parade out hostages with blindfolds.  They would do all of these horrific things that would enrage Americans, knowing that the American president couldn't do anything about it. And they would just keep - MIKA BRZEZINSKI: They were ruthless. SCARBOROUGH: - pulling the string and pulling the string. And it cost Carter the presidency. They're doing the same thing now. And I'm not being glib when I say this. They're not burning American flags. They're doing memes.  JONATHAN LEMIRE: Yeah.  SCARBOROUGH: They're hitting where it hurts the most now in this new culture. And like Legos and teletubbies and all of these things that actually burning an American flag would play into Trump's strength to say, we're going to fight, we're going to do this. But now they're mocking him ruthlessly because they understand that that's how you get to him the most. LEMIRE: And how many times have we heard Donald Trump over the last ten years complain that the world is laughing at the United States right now? Iran is laughing at him. They do know what buttons to push. It's a very online presidency. It's an online nation right now. And people are seeing these memes, and the president doesn't have a great way of responding - SCARBOROUGH: Like, how about the example of like when he said something like, I need an answer by eight, or we're going to destroy your civilization? They quickly responded and said, that's not a good time for us. How about two in the morning? Yeah. And so it's a - even when he's trying to be tough online, the Iranians know how to mock him and ridicule him.  And again, this isn't just about Donald Trump. This is what we're saying here is this is about every American president that crosses them. They know how to pull the strings. And now, as Doctor Brzezinski warned, as everybody else warned about for decades, now they have the straight. LEMIRE: Yeah. Tehran has specialized in humiliating American presidents for a long time. And just a few more examples here. Let's remember they've blown off deadlines. They've ignored threats. The time where the foreign minister was in Islamabad and the U.S. negotiating team was heading to the airport to fly to Islamabad to meet them. And the foreign minister simply left like they knew. They're poking, you know, the president where it hurts. (...) 7:15:45 AM Eastern MATTHEWS: So I think it's the fear of another girl's school being hit, because we all got tremendous clearance as media people to go in there and get that story. One thing the Iranians are good at is letting Americans know the bad stories about themselves, and they will let the country know how bad it was that we accidentally hit that girls' school.  If we do that again, and we will do that again, if we start doing saturation bombing and we start hitting critical facilities that affect people's lives, we're going to get into killing people. And I think Trump must know that.  I think Admiral Stavridis, his third option, seems like the one going to keep trying to open the straits, just limited warfare just in one part of the country, the strait itself. Try to open that up. It seems like that is what he was recommending, I think. (...)

EXCLUSIVE: The Big Four News Apps have flooded users with cruise ship headlines tied to hantavirus fears. Missing from any coverage, however, is news that federal immigration officials raided a Disney Cruise Line ship during a child sexual abuse investigation. The ship, Disney Magic, is operated by Disney Cruise Line, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, which also owns ABC News. The Media Research Center previously found ABC conveniently failed to provide on-air coverage of the raid on its flagship news programs, Good Morning America and World News Tonight.  Not to be outdone, Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News followed the same playbook from May 6 through May 11. So far this year, the Big Four News Apps have published a total of 228 stories from ABC News among their daily top morning editions, calling into question whether the digital news gatekeepers covered for Disney/ABC because of connected business interests or because ABC News is the most anti-Trump among the Big Three News broadcasters, as shown by MRC research.  MRC’s Findings: The Big Four News Apps excluded the Customs and Border Protection raid on the Disney/ABC cruise ship from their top 20 morning stories despite it being widely covered, although mostly among right-leaning outlets. Examples of outlets that covered the story: Fox News, New York Post, Daily Wire, Daily Caller, Breitbart, The Washington Times and Daily Telegraph. Instead, the Big Four News Apps promoted at least 33 stories about a different cruise — the one with the Hantavirus outbreak. The break down is as follows: Apple News: 14 stories Google News: five stories Microsoft’s MSN: one story Yahoo News: 13 stories Big Four News Apps Quiet Amid Disney Cruise Child Sexual Abuse Scandal  The scandal directly implicates a Disney/ABC-owned cruise line that markets heavily to families and children, while raising questions about the conglomerate’s employee background screening. CBP said Disney Magic was one of eight cruise ships raided between April 23 and April 27 as part of an investigation into child sexual exploitation material, according to NBC News.  The federal agency added that 27 of the 28 crewmembers from multiple cruises targeted in the operation were allegedly “involved in either the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing of CSEM or child pornography.” The suspects’ names were not released, though authorities identified them as 26 Filipinos, one Portuguese national and one Indonesian national. CBP suggested that the 27 suspects were deported to their home countries. The Disney/ABC-linked scandal first surfaced publicly on May 5, when passengers told local San Diego outlets that they had witnessed federal agents detaining individuals while the ship disembarked in April. Other passengers reported seeing crewmembers handcuffed by authorities. A subsequent DHS statement confirmed the operation involved CBP agents conducting an ongoing child sexual exploitation investigation, part of the agency’s “Operation Tidal Wave.” “The arrests targeted individuals suspected of involvement with Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), based on information received from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” ICE spokesperson Sandra Grisolia told NBC San Diego. “The arrestees were transported to Los Angeles for processing, and their visas were revoked.” The story quickly gained traction on social media but received comparatively little attention from Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News. The lack of coverage was particularly notable given the digital news gatekeepers’ appetite for cruise-related stories. During the same period reviewed, MRC found that the Big Four News Apps collectively promoted at least 33 stories tied to Hantavirus concerns and reported outbreaks aboard cruise ships, including at least one story by ABC News, promoted by Apple News.  But the Big Four News Apps all chose to hide stories about the Disney/ABC scandal despite several publications they could have promoted, including: “Disney cruise workers busted in child porn sting, hauled off ships for deportation,” by Fox News, published May 7.  “Disney cruise ship staffers among 28 arrested in massive child porn operation,” by the New York Post, published May 6. “Disney Does Damage Control After Several Staffers Arrested on Cruise Ship in Massive Child Porn Sting,” by Breitbart, published May 7. “Feds Raid Disney Cruise Ship In Major Child Porn Sting,” by The Daily Write, published May 7. “Authorities Reportedly Arrest Disney Cruise Workers In Child Porn Sting,” by the Daily Caller, published May 8. “Disney cruise crew detained in federal child exploitation operation,” by The Washington Times, published May 9. “‘Really unsettling’: Disney cruises staff arrested in child porn sting,” by The Daily Telegraph, published May 7. Instead, the Big Four went with headlines about a very different cruise, including the following: Apple News “Hantavirus live updates: American tests positive, another symptomatic, HHS says,” by ABC News, promoted May 11. Google News “Three sick passengers evacuated from virus ship and Trump-backed candidates win in Indiana: Morning Rundown,” by NBC News, promoted May 6. Microsoft’s MSN “WHO gives update on hantavirus-hit cruise ship as passengers are tracked across 12 countries,” by Fox News, promoted May 8. Yahoo News “Two passengers from hantavirus cruise ship back in Georgia, GPH says,” by USA Today, promoted May 7. Methodology: The Media Research Center analyzed the top 20 stories published by Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News from May 6 through May 11 at approximately 8:30 a.m. ET. Researchers reviewed the dataset to identify stories related to Hantavirus coverage across cruise ships, as well as to determine whether the aggregators included coverage of the CBP raid on the Disney cruise ship.  

PBS’s Friday evening political roundtable Washington Week with The Atlantic got nasty and personal about President Donald Trump, going beyond criticism of his handling of the Iran War to mock him personally and suggest he’s demented. After The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire damned the war in Iran (“Gas prices are up. His poll numbers are down. Very few of the U.S. military goals have actually been accomplished there in Tehran”), the conversation turned to Trump’s latest beef with a reporter. Trump apparently loves to brutally attack “black female reporters in particular,” according to PBS News Hour co-anchor Amna Nawaz, appearing as a roundtable guest. Amna Nawaz: There's two things going on here. Can I just point out, one is the president has a tendency to attack female reporters in a particularly brutal way, black female reporters in particular. Rachel Scott, as we all know, is a fabulous reporter and a wonderful person, and doesn't deserve that. No one does. The other, to Jonathan's point -- Moderator (and Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, it was particularly nasty. PBS News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz on Washington Week: "the president has a tendency to attack female reporters in a particularly brutal way, black female reporters in particular. Rachel Scott as we all know, is a fabulous reporter and a wonderful person and doesn't deserve that." pic.twitter.com/jjr1BIMOtg — Clay Waters (@claywaters44) May 12, 2026 Of course, Trump has insults for everybody, not just black female reporters. And the Washington Examiner pointed out that “similar questions by Scott [about soaring gas prices] do not appear to have been raised during former President Joe Biden’s term, during which gas prices reached record highs on June 14, 2022.” Then the Washington Week talk turned to Trump’s state of mind. After earlier complaining the president was apparently bored with Iran, the panel looked askance at Trump bringing his justifications for the war up at a youth fitness event at the White House and even suggested it was evidence of the president’s derangement. Goldberg: I want to read something that Peter wrote last month, and you can comment on it….Peter wrote, Democrats who have long challenged Mr. Trump's psychological fitness have issued a fresh chorus of calls to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power for disability. But it is not just a concern voiced by partisans on the left, late night comics, or mental health professionals making long-distance diagnoses. It can be heard now among retired generals, diplomats, and foreign officials. And most strikingly, it can be heard now on the political right among one-time allies of the president. Goldberg was referencing a month-old front-page story by Baker in the New York Times: “Trump’s Volatile Talk Revives Doubts on Stability -- Onetime Loyalists Call President ‘Lunatic' and ‘Insane.’” Peter Baker: You could find episodes, obviously, in his first term. You could find plenty you know, to raise questions about stability. But I think what is striking is it happening more and more, right? Like every week seems to bring another example of people look at that and they scratch their head and say, "oh my goodness, what is up with that?" Later, The Atlantic’s Vivian Salama reminded viewers that Trump’s “80th birthday is a month away.” It’s a bit rich to talk about the 25th Amendment in reference to Trump when this same program aided in hiding former President Joe Biden’s clearly declining capacity, most infamously on the September 1, 2023 show when The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich accused those who called Biden demented of "lying," while moderator Goldberg said of Biden, “Mentally, he’s quite acute,” and Leibovich responded, “It seems like it.” Meanwhile, the New York Times embarrassed itself claiming that video clips showing Biden’s infirmities were misleading “cheap fakes.”