The Friday night News Hour pundit panel concluded on a historic PBS topic: Watergate. In its earliest years, PBS found it delightful to contribute to President Nixon's political demise, running the Watergate hearings live during the day and repeating them at night. PBS anchor Jim Lehrer was elated: "as justice, it was pure delicious!" Vice President Vance this week claimed Nixon is undergoing a historical "renaissance" and "if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy."  That's not entirely true. The Democrats tried to repeat this impeach-or-resign move with "independent counsels" with  Reagan over Iran-Contra, and with Trump and Russian "collusion" in his first term. It's never a "12-hour news story" with a leftist media that delights in ruining Republican reputations for all time. Nevertheless, Capehart expressed a typical disgust:  J.D. Vance said this week Nixon was undergoing a historical "renaissance" and today Watergate would be a "12-hour news story." Nah. But it upset Capehart and Brooks on PBS @NewsHour, who said at least Nixon had a "sense of shame," unlike Trump. In its early years, PBS LOVED… pic.twitter.com/zEUUAcrrX4 — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 27, 2026 CAPEHART: Nixon did not fall because of the deep state, which is what he said in another part of that answer. His presidency fell because he had the one thing that Donald Trump has never had, and that's a sense of shame. When fellow Republicans went to President Nixon and said, because of all the stuff you did, bugging the DNC and all these criminal acts, we are going to impeach you, and rather than President Nixon suffering the shame of being at the time what would have been the first president impeached in a very long time, he decided to resign. That's not what we're dealing with here with President Trump. And certainly Vice President Vance wrapping his arms around Nixon is a very curious thing to do. Brooks wanted to underline how successful the prosecutors were in getting convictions, but that was then, apparently:  BROOKS: More than a dozen people went to jail. It was a criminal enterprise. But having said that, J.D. Vance is absolutely right. It would be a one-day story today, because you define deviancy down. The standards of the entire country have been deteriorating because of what we have had lived through over the last decade. And for that reason, the Republicans would not do what Republicans did in 1974, which was to tell him you got to go. And so it would -- he is right. It would be an absolute one-day story, and we would all move on. [Laughter] Earlier, Brooks did effectively identify what's going on with the Democratic Socialist faction (in an academic way, without objecting to it):  On PBS, David Brooks effectively identified what's going on with the Democratic Socialist wing of the Democrats (in an academic way, without objecting to it): the party's energy has shifted from the unions to the universities. pic.twitter.com/HHPJBAgK8J — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 27, 2026 BROOKS: Yes, I think there's somewhat of a realignment going on. The Democratic Party's heart and soul used to be the labor movement. It used to be the unions. It's not anymore. The heart and soul of the Democratic Party is the universities and especially the elite universities. And so the candidate who won in New York 13, Darializa Avila Chevalier, went to Columbia, was an activist in the Gaza protests. She is a sociology Ph.D., or I think she's trying to get her Ph.D. And she grows out of that place. And if you look at all the candidates that -- the DSA candidates, where they did well, they did very well in the more affluent, the whiter and the better educated parts of New York City. And the traditional candidates did well in the poorer and more multiracial parts of New York City. And so the faculty lounge has become a strong part of the Democratic Party and faculty lounge politics have become a strong part of the Democratic Party. And that I think extends somewhat beyond New York City. You have Democratic socialist candidates in Washington, D.C., mayoral race, around the country. You have other DSA candidates. I don't think it's going to totally realign the party. There just aren't that many people with sociology doctorates and people who respond to this faculty lounge politics. But there are enough. And I think one of the things that will shift within the Democratic Party as a whole is I think Israel will become a flash point for whoever wants to be the nominee in 2028. I think the Democratic Party is really shifting strongly on that one, I think on some of the economic issues. Where I'm curious to see, if we go back to no fund of police. Avila Chevalier is a prison abolitionist, and she's been asked repeatedly, do you think murderers should serve time in jail? And she refuses to answer that question. Democrats did very poorly a couple of years ago because of the defund the police. That just seemed out of touch to a lot of people, including a lot of Democrats. And will the party make that mistake again because the -- where the energy is in the party is in the DSA wing? But hope for the long-term elections is the traditional parts of the party somehow getting some mojo and some energy to match what they're up against. Capehart, like his fellow MS NOW hosts, tried to claim this DSA thing might be a New York City phenomenon, not a national trend. But it's happened in deep-blue cities all over. 

We all know that the leftist media hasn’t been objective for a long time now. Even so, it’s still a bit shocking to hear them admit their agenda out loud. That is what MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell did on Thursday’s episode of The Last Word, in which he flat-out admitted to baiting his guests into airing their personal grievances against President Trump. At the same time, he blamed Trump for making politics personal.  O’Donnell hosted former Secretary of State John Kerry, who served in the Obama administration and negotiated the JCPOA deal with Iran, onto his show Wednesday to discuss the new U.S.-Iran MOU that had recently been signed by Trump’s administration. During that interview, O’Donnell, in his own words, “invited [Kerry] to get personal about Donald Trump,” though Kerry refused to take the bait: I think that what really needs to be focused on here is not bad or any kind of personal pieces here, in my judgment. I mean, there's no place for the personal here.      It’s hard to imagine the political world without the personal animus held between members of government, and also between the people and those they view as ‘opposition.’ But the biggest reason for the increasing polarization between political parties and viewpoints has no doubt been the media. The media -- especially on cable TV -- thrives on riling people up against others. And the leftist networks have gotten that down to a science by this point. You can look at the several assassination attempts against Trump, violence against ICE, the murder of Charlie Kirk, or any number of politically motivated attacks for evidence. Left-wing domestic terrorism and violence has been prevalent around the globe since the French Revolution. And yet, despite claiming to denounce the recent spike in political violence, CNN, MS NOW, ABC, and other liberal media have stoked the use of violent rhetoric against Republicans. But if you ask O’Donnell, he has a simple answer for why our political rhetoric is so fraught nowadays: The United States Senate used to be mostly filled with people like John Kerry, who would never publicly indulge their personal feelings when discussing or voting on what they thought was best for America. And then came Donald Trump, who can walk into a closed room with Republican Senators, call Lisa Murkowski 'a horrible person.' And they all sit there in pathetic, cowardly silence. . . Because for Donald Trump, there is nothing but the personal.  As Michael Jackson once put it, O’Donnell really should look at “the man in the mirror.” He denounced “personal” politics while doing the exact opposite on his show. He admitted that John Kerry was “a bigger person” than he was, because O’Donnell can’t help but make everything personal. And he wants the guests who come on his show to do the same thing.  The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: MS NOW's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 6/25/26 10:12:52 p.m. Eastern (...) LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: And last night, I invited John Kerry on this program when he was a guest here to say, 'I told you so.' And he proved himself, once again, to be a bigger person than I am.  [Cut to interview] O'DONNELL: What is it like for you now when you see Donald Trump desperately trying to negotiate the deal that you negotiated, desperately trying to claw back to get to the point that you got to.  You're not the 'I told you so' type, that's not the kind of phrase you would use, but that's certainly the posture we all think you have a right to be sitting in tonight. JOHN KERRY: Well, Lawrence, let me just say to you that I think that what really needs to be focused on here is not bad or any kind of personal pieces here, in my judgment. I mean, there's no place for the personal here.  This is really a matter of what's good diplomacy, what's good for the United States, what's good outcome. [Cut back to live] O'DONNELL: There's a lion of the Senate. John Kerry served 28 years in the United States Senate.  That's the way it used to be. You don't make it personal. That is what decency looks like. That is what honor sounds like.  'There's no place for the personal here.' That's what John Kerry said when I invited him to get personal about Donald Trump lying about him for years and what he accomplished as Secretary of State in his nuclear agreement with Iran. 'There's no place for the personal.' That's what he told me.  Washington used to be filled with people like John Kerry. The United States Senate used to be mostly filled with people like John Kerry, who would never publicly indulge their personal feelings when discussing or voting on what they thought was best for America.  And then came Donald Trump, who can walk into a closed room with Republican Senators, call Lisa Murkowski 'a horrible person.' And they all, they all sit there in pathetic, cowardly silence, with one of them going out later and telling the press that Donald Trump was completely justified in being so angry at them. Because for Donald Trump, there is nothing but the personal. And for the Republicans who have put the United States Senate in Donald Trump's service, there is nothing but living the rest of their lives in disgrace.  (...)

If you thought Elon Musk would take the top spot as the 2026 midterm donor, think again. The Godfather of the Left, George Soros, is back to his old bag of tricks with another major cash dump to swing the pendulum of legislative power back to the left. The Washington Post reported June 25 that Soros had taken the title as the 2026 midterms' largest donor, with a whopping $102 million poured so far into his political cash cow — Democracy PAC — ahead of the November election. The news comes after it was reported in April that Soros kicked off his 2026 spending with $50 million. The level of Soros' expenditures signals that the 95-year-old leftist billionaire isn’t exactly riding off into the sunset for retirement despite formally handing control over his multibillion-dollar philanthropic empire to his more radical son Alex. In fact, the elder Soros has proven beyond any doubt that he has no intention of ceasing his attempts to buy political outcomes that comport with his utopian ideals. Ironically, it was The Post itself that stipulated in 2018 that “[R]ather than recede from public life in his twilight years, Soros has decided to push even harder for his agenda.” That’s as true now as it was then. During the 2022 midterms, Soros also took the mantle as top dog in the political donor class by pouring over $178 million into blunting the GOP’s push to retake control of Congress with an electoral mandate. It appears he’s not keen on letting anyone else be the midterm spending king this time around, even with an opponent like Musk in the picture. But Soros’ political campaign spending is only a microcosm of the plethora of leftist agenda items that Soros has fueled with his cash.  From a holistic perspective, Soros has pumped billions of his wealth into an obsessive vendetta undergirded by global governance, open borders, financing pro-terror causes, electing and controlling soft-on-crime prosecutors, gaining extraordinary influence within the information media ecosystem, and backing extremist political groups dedicated to crushing American exceptionalism and capitalism. Though Alex is the designated crown prince of his empire, the elder Soros is not going away anytime soon. He will continue to bend “the arc of history” as long as he's able to do so.

This week, it looks like socialism is on the march. Suddenly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are "rocking" the Democratic Party. The Manchin moderates are missing. To the headlines: From Fox News: Winners and losers emerge after socialist earthquake rocks NYC primaries  All three Mamdani-endorsed candidates defeated establishment opponents and are expected to win in November From USA Today:    First NYC. Now DC. Can Mamdani’s win keep powering progressives?  From the aptly named Jacobin: Socialists Won City Elections Across the Country This Week   From NewsNation:  Democratic socialists’ primary wins are a ‘real test’ for the progressive left, says Chuck Todd  From the Los Angeles Times:  In L.A., as in other U.S. cities, democratic socialists are poised to expand power at City Hall  And on and on…and on and on….go similar headlines from the media. All touting the socialist sweeps in New York, the District of Columbia and elsewhere around the country. Now comes the hard part. Soon enough all these socialist winners will be sworn into the offices they have so furiously sought.  And results will have to be produced. Already there have been some anti-Mamdani rumbles. In recent days was this sample headline, starting with a slam on the Mayor’s “Office of Mass Engagement.”  From the New York Post:  Mamdani’s $54M mass engagement office did little to get out the vote with questionable campaign But in fact, the Mamdani coverage thus far has been on the positive side. Here’s, of course, the lefty New York Times proclaiming through science writer David Wallace-Wells:  For Zohran Mamdani, it has been a pretty sunny start. A Siena poll in late January found that the mayor had the approval of 68 percent of New York City — almost 18 percentage points more than he got in the November election and good enough for a net approval of plus 48. This put him in rarefied air alongside San Francisco’s Daniel Lurie, who more than a year into his mayoralty has been given credit for a profound turnaround in the city and who looks perhaps like the country’s most popular elected official. In February, after some frustrating snow, Mamdani’s approval dipped slightly, to 63 percent. His net approval was still higher than anything Eric Adams notched during the giddy period when he was being celebrated as a future face of the national Democratic Party. It’s better than Michael Bloomberg ever managed, according to Marist, and in a political era widely seen to be drowning in negativity. ….But whatever the future holds, the mayoralty has begun with a very high base line of support. Mamdani’s thumping win in November has given way to what looks less like a liberal crackup and more like the city coming together behind an incredibly popular new mayor.” In fact, results will be produced. They will be good, bad or indifferent. The question now is will the media follow those results? Not just follow them if they’re seen to be good. But follow them if, in fact, as conservatives expect, they turn out to be not so good. Or worse. Example?  Back there in the ancient long ago of 1965, the media of the day was agog, filled with excitement at the news a handsome, young liberal Republican Congressman from New York - John Lindsay by name - was running for Mayor of New York. Two years earlier, the young, dashing President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in what was, in fact, a horrific tragedy.  The media (and in fact much of the country) was yearning for, as it were, a new JFK. And young, handsome, liberal Congressman Lindsay was seen as making that media dream come true. Lindsay won. And then? And then the new, dashing young Mayor was learning that being the Mayor of New York was no day at the beach. He had to deal with municipal strikes, ruthless union bosses, a soaring crime rate and more. Slowly, ever so agonizingly, the supposed heir of a new Camelot was watching his once promising career go up in political flames. He barely won re-election and felt compelled to switch parties. Eventually he sought the Democratic nomination for president, getting nowhere. And that, as the saying goes, was that. If nothing else, what happened to Lindsay was a lesson in politics that one does indeed have to be careful of what one wishes for. Which brings us back to all these headlines about triumphant socialists winning elections in one blue city after another. The hard fact is that once in office, the socialist -inclined Mamdanis of the political world will have to start producing results.  And the question then? Will a once-adoring left-leaning media buckle-up and do their job of truthfully reporting the results they are producing? Or, as conservatives suspect, not producing? The hard fact is that being the Mayor of any American city is a tough job. That is doubly so if the job in question is being Mayor of New York - as the late Mayor Lindsay quickly found out. So. The question for the media. Will the media in both New York City and around the country take on the inescapable task of covering all the ups and downs of the socialist Mamdani mayoralty? Will Mayor Mamdani prove to be such a decided success that the move among Democrats will be to elect him as the socialist Governor of New York? And, down the road, the socialist President of the United States? Or will the media coverage of the socialist Mamdani mayoralty be so blistering that the New York mayor’s job will turn out to be his first -- and last -- time in public office? Only time will tell, of course. But the hard fact is that the next four years of the Mamdani mayoralty will be a serious testing of not just the new Mayor himself and the results his socialist mayoralty produces but of the media - both in New York and nationally - as it covers his out-front socialist mayoralty. Decades ago, the media of the day lavished favorable coverage on the then-new Soviet Union. And it stuck with that kind of coverage as time moved on, even as the reality of life in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics proved to be considerably less than good. Will the media history of covering socialists and socialism in power change? Stay tuned.

On Wednesday's The 11th Hour, MS NOW host Ali Velshi devoted his show's regular "Night Light" segment to cheering on pilots who provide women with free plane trips to get abortions. Velshi began the segment by relating that a small plane is flying across the sky, adding: "Inside, there's no light. The plane itself is the light." He recalled that it was the anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade as he elaborated: MS NOW's Ali Velshi Cheers Free Plane Trips to Get Abortions pic.twitter.com/FlZykg5vO2 — Brad Wilmouth (@bradwilmouth) June 26, 2026 Tonight's "Night Light" is the pilot of the plane carrying someone to get the medical care that they couldn't get at home. Today marks four years since the Dobbs decision, the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court that overturned abortion rights and reversed nearly 50 years of settled law. The MS NOW host continued: Forty-one states now have abortion bans or restrictions in effect -- 13 of those are total bans, with only very limited exceptions. Studies show that women are twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related deaths in states where abortion care is denied or delayed because of restrictions. That leaves nearly 21 million pregnant women forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to get care. He added: "Which brings us to Mike Bonanza, a volunteer pilot who founded Elevated Access. We discovered his story through the journalist Jessica Valenti's excellent Substack called 'Abortion Every Day.'" After noting that Bonanza's name is a pseudonym, Velshi informed viewers that hundreds of pilots have volunteered to transport women seeking abortions as well as people who want "gender-affirming care" in states where there are fewer restrictions: Even before the Dobbs decision, Bonanza had been offering volunteer flights for those who needed help getting to their nearest clinic. But within days of the Dobbs decision, over 500 pilots expressed interest in volunteering to help. The organization now offers completely free flights to those seeking abortion care, as well as gender-affirming care across the United States. He inserted more pro-abortion language as he added: Since Elevated Access began, they have helped over 3,600 passengers fly more than two million miles. For the people who have been told their bodies are not their own, these pilots are the ones who show up -- no fanfare, no press release, just a small plane in the dark and someone in the seat of that small plane on the way to getting the care they need -- the care they should have the right to. Transcript follows: MS NOW's The 11th Hour June 24, 2026 11:57 p.m. Eastern ALI VELSHI: Somewhere tonight, right now, a small plane is crossing the sky in the dark -- a small red light on its right wing -- its left wing tip -- a small green light on its left wing tip. Inside, there's no light. The plane itself is the light. Actually, not the plane -- really, it's just metal. Tonight's "Night Light" is the pilot of the plane carrying someone to get the medical care that they couldn't get at home. Today marks four years since the Dobbs decision, the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court that overturned abortion rights and reversed nearly 50 years of settled law. Forty-one states now have abortion bans or restrictions in effect -- 13 of those are total bans, with only very limited exceptions. Studies show that women are twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related deaths in states where abortion care is denied or delayed because of restrictions. That leaves nearly 21 million pregnant women forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to get care. Which brings us to Mike Bonanza, a volunteer pilot who founded Elevated Access. We discovered his story through the journalist Jessica Valenti's excellent Substack called "Abortion Every Day." Bonanza notes in an interview in Men's Health that his name is a pseudonym. He said it's partly for safety reasons, but also to check himself against ever making this work about him. Even before the Dobbs decision, Bonanza had been offering volunteer flights for those who needed help getting to their nearest clinic. But within days of the Dobbs decision, over 500 pilots expressed interest in volunteering to help. The organization now offers completely free flights to those seeking abortion care, as well as gender-affirming care across the United States. They keep a team of lawyers to work around travel bans and help stay on top of constantly changing laws in each state. Since Elevated Access began, they have helped over 3,600 passengers fly more than two million miles. For the people who have been told their bodies are not their own, these pilots are the ones who show up -- no fanfare, no press release, just a small plane in the dark and someone in the seat of that small plane on the way to getting the care they need -- the care they should have the right to.