MRC Watchdogs churn out breaking news on a daily basis. Don't miss Today's Highlights, where you can keep up with the top MRC content, whether it's the latest study on media bias, a glaring omission from the elitist media, or how the Big Tech companies are serving up the same leftist spin as the media.  Top Stories:     What Fraud Scandals? Google News Goes to Bat for Democrats as Midterms Approach 'None of the Above' Rated Best Late-Night Comedian on TV Scarborough Rages Over Trump's 'Marie Antoinette' Ballroom: Remember Her Fate? Sunny Hostin Calls for Open, Andor-Style 'Rebellion' to Fight Trump, GOP     What Fraud Scandals? Google News Goes to Bat for Democrats as Midterms Approach Google News completely omitted coverage of multiple major fraud scandals involving Democrats from its top morning stories in April.  The excluded stories included a Department of Justice indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center and ethics violations by a Florida congresswoman.  Right-leaning media outlets were heavily sidelined, making up less than three percent of the total analyzed stories on the platform.  Left-leaning outlets dominated the feed at nearly seventy percent, which critics argue is a deliberate effort to shield Democrats before the midterm elections.   'None of the Above' Rated Best Late-Night Comedian on TV A national survey revealed that thirty-eight percent of respondents chose none of the above as the best late-night comedian on television.  The poll numbers for individual late-night hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert sat much lower in a virtual tie around eleven to thirteen percent.  Viewership and profitability for late-night talk shows have steadily declined over the last decade with major drops in key demographics.  The steep decline is attributed to hosts moving away from traditional comedy to focus on highly polarized political commentary.   Scarborough Rages Over Trump's 'Marie Antoinette' Ballroom: Remember Her Fate? Joe Scarborough repeatedly attacked plans for a new White House ballroom by labeling it a billion dollar Marie Antoinette ballroom during his show.  The host contrasted the cost of the project with the financial struggles of everyday Americans dealing with high grocery, gas, and rent prices.  Using the Marie Antoinette comparison invokes a historical parallel to the bloody climax of the French Revolution.  Scarborough uses inflammatory rhetoric while routinely lecturing conservatives about dangerous speech.   Sunny Hostin Calls for Open, Andor-Style 'Rebellion' to Fight Trump, GOP During an episode of the Behind the Table podcast, The View co-host Sunny Hostin called for the formation of a rebellion and a true resistance to fight Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Hostin expressed frustration with mainstream Democrats, stating that they are bringing knives to gunfights and failing to match the political energy of their opponents. The call for a rebellion was inspired by a discussion with executive producer Brian Teta about the Disney sci-fi series Andor, which depicts violent efforts to overthrow an empire. Hostin also claimed that voting rights are under attack in the American South, comparing recent Supreme Court decisions on partisan gerrymandering to a new Jim Crow era.

The indictment of officially former but probably still current Cuban dictator Raúl Castro triggered strong emotions all across the spectrum, whether you were a part of the exile community holding out for justice after 67 years of horrors, or whether you are a media apologist enraged that the brother of one of your heroes might soon find the D-boys knocking on his door. This is particularly true at MS NOW, where there is no shortage of seething over the indictment. Watch as President Barack Obama’s own “Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting” Ben Rhodes joins Jen Psaki in rage-vomiting all over the indictment and over Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s earlier video address directed at the Cuban people. WATCH: Jen Psaki and Ben Rhodes hopelessly seethe at the indictment of Raúl Castro, to whom their boss personally offered his limp wrist in 2016. Note the gigantic lie about what causes scarcity in Cuba and note the multiple gratuitous potshots at the Cuban exile community. JEN… pic.twitter.com/VATycrVXY1 — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 21, 2026 JEN PSAKI: Okay. I just want to start with the- the video that Secretary of State Marco Rubio put out today in Spanish. It was a Spanish-language message. What do you think? Who is the audience? What is he trying to achieve for this video? What did you make of it? BEN RHODES: Well, you know, Jen, as you remember, I negotiated the normalization of relations with Cuba, including with Raul Castro, directly. Traveled to Havana with you and President Obama in 2016. So I've thought a lot about this. That video was extraordinary in its hubris, tone,-deafness and hypocrisy. I think the audience for that video was not the Cuban people, most of whom probably won't even see it. The audience was kind of Rubio's own political base. The more hardline Cuban Americans, mainly in south Florida, who have wanted there to be a regime change since the Bay of Pigs invasion, when this was last attempted in the Kennedy administration.  And just very quickly to go through it, the absurdity of it. Look, I'm not here to defend the Cuban government, but the reality is the scarcity in Cuba is not because its leaders stole some money from the people. It's because there's been an embargo for decades that denies basic goods and denies Cuba access to the international financial system. And because there's been a full blockade on Cuba for months, which has denied them fuel, which has led to power shortages, which has killed people, because if you cut off power to hospitals, people die and children are malnourished.  Second, the absurdity of him talking about the corruption of billions of dollars being stolen at the same time that Donald Trump, his family and his cronies have been looting literally the American treasury or leveraging American power to get billions of dollars in crypto companies. Nobody believes that this is some earnest anti-corruption agenda.  And then lastly, do we really think these people are credible in delivering messages about human rights and democracy as they dismantle human rights and democracy at home? No. So this is about power. This is about treating the Western Hemisphere like our empire. And it's about something that no Americans, other than that small political political base of Rubio’s is interested in, which is yet another regime change operation.   When one hears the nominal utterance of “with all due respect”, you know that there is some disrespect incoming. Likewise the “I’m not here to defend the Cuban government”- uttered both by Rhodes and Psaki beforehand, which was promptly followed by nothing less than disgusting regime apologia.  What destroyed Cuba was the COMMUNISM. Not Helms-Burton, or the embargo, or the various post-Venezuela actions taken by the Trump administration. Havana was in ruins, with hungry people roaming its trash-lined streets, well before the oil embargo. Rhodes knows that and Psaki knows that, but they’d like their viewers not to know. Hence this hatefest on MS NOW, conducted by two Obama-era officials who resent the exile community’s broad rejection of their failed precious Cuba Deal, which yielded little more than Obama’s infamous limp-wristed photo with Raúl Castro. This explains Rhodes's weird domestic policy non sequiturs, and rage at this new approach to Cuba, knowing full well there is very little they can do about it other than cope and seethe.  

Tuesday’s PBS News Hour invited the worst possible guest expert to comment on the deadly shooting at an Islamic center in San Diego: The deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR’s sordid Israel-hating history should render a spokesman from the group discreditable. CAIR, perpetually coddled on (previously public) media like PBS and NPR, has been labeled a terrorist group by the state of Texas as well as United Arab Emirates (UAE). Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has also linked CAIR to terrorism, noting that the group's co-founders had "intimate links to Hamas.” The FBI cut off "high-level cooperation with the group" way back in 2008. Most disgusting, CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, declared himself happy about the October 7 massacre while speaking to the group American Muslims for Palestine (notably, Awad is still CAIR's executive director). None of that sordid history bothered PBS. They set up CAIR to denounce America.  PBS @NewsHour anchor Geoff Bennett set up a CAIR leader to denounce America as a terribly "Islamophobic" place in the aftermath of the San Diego mosque shooting. Edward Ahmad Mitchell made the shooting deaths about rhetoric from Trump and the Republicans, just the way PBS likes… pic.twitter.com/EIzRmIqr8N — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 21, 2026 Anchor Geoff Bennett: Attacks on houses of worship remain relatively rare in the U.S., but incidents targeting religious communities have risen in recent years. Last year, six people were killed in shootings at churches in Michigan and Minneapolis. Temple Israel Synagogue in Detroit, which was targeted in an attack two months ago, said in a statement: "The images coming from San Diego are all too familiar to us." The synagogue also called for $1 per month to protect houses of worship…. We turn now to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations….How has this shooting in the broader rise in anti-Muslim incidents across the country affected Muslim communities psychologically and emotionally?  Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States is completely out of control. We have elected officials, members of Congress, governors who have in recent months said that American Muslims should be destroyed, that Islam has no place in America, that we should ban the practice of Islam, that mosques are military outposts….It's time for Islamophobia to no longer be the last publicly acceptable form of bigotry in our country. And that starts from the top down. Another fact skipped was the controversy over the San Diego mosque’s own Imam, Taha Hassane, who said in a video days after the October 7 massacre: “This did not start last week or on October 7. This is the result of brutal Zionist occupation and genocide…Resistance is justified when people are under occupation and don’t let them change that narrative.” But Bennett set up CAIR to be an anti-hate group:  Bennett: The Associated Press reports that the manifesto that was left behind had hateful rhetoric toward Jewish people, Muslims, Islam, the LGBTQ community, Black people, women, the political left and right. At this point, what's the path forward here? What's it going to take to really lower the temperature? Geoff Bennett to guest from Israel-loathing Muslim pressure group CAIR: "...the manifesto that was left behind had hateful rhetoric toward Jewish people, Muslims, Islam, the LGBTQ community, black people, women....What's it going to take to really lower the temperature?" pic.twitter.com/HOCUnuWyDj — Clay Waters (@claywaters44) May 20, 2026 Mitchell is precisely the wrong person to ask about lowering rhetorical temperature, given CAIR’s shameful history, including its executive director (who is still there) celebrating October 7. Compare this Islam-sympathetic angle to News Hour’s response to the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting in Minneapolis by a transgender (biological male) in August 2025. Nothing about anti-Catholic/anti-Christian hatred. Instead, PBS invited Minneapolis Democratic mayor James Frey to emotionally push gun control. Bennett: Minnesota has a red flag law that allows firearms to be temporarily removed from people who are deemed to be a danger to themselves or to others. We don`t know enough about what transpired to know whether that would have prevented this tragedy. But how does it work? And what more needs to be done at the state and federal level to prevent another tragedy like this from happening again? Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: ….let`s just be very real here. We have too many guns in America. When you have more guns than you have people, you have got a problem. When people are able to get guns that are in some form of severe mental health crisis, you got a problem…. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 5/19/26 7:06:57 p.m. Anchor Geoff Bennett: This shooting at San Diego's Islamic Center has understandably sent shockwaves to the Muslim community here in the U.S. For more, we turn now to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Thank you for being with us. Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Thank you for having me. Geoff Bennett: How has this shooting in the broader rise in anti-Muslim incidents across the country affected Muslim communities psychologically and emotional? Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States is completely out of control. We have elected officials, members of Congress, governors who have in recent months said that American Muslims should be destroyed, that Islam has no place in America, that we should ban the practice of Islam, that mosques are military outposts. Just last week, at a congressional hearing, that language was used. And so, when you see that sort of anti-Muslim hate, it's no surprise that someone took it very seriously and engaged in a horrific act of violence. So American Muslims, sadly, are accustomed to this. This mosque had security there for a reason, because we know about the potential threat. Now we feel, after this incident, it's time for this to end. It's time for Islamophobia to no longer be the last publicly acceptable form of bigotry in our country. And that starts from the top down. Geoff Bennett: To your point about the level of security, we heard from the imam of the Islamic Center. He said the center had done everything possible to prevent that kind of attack. They applied for DHS grants. They employed armed security. They conducted drills. They had cameras inside and out. What challenges do mosques, houses of worship face when it comes to protecting themselves in this day and age? Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Yes. Well, look, a house of worship is not a military fortress. It's a place where people come to worship, whether you're going to synagogue, a church, or a mosque. And so it's very difficult to impose significant security restrictions without interfering with its ability to be welcoming to people of different faiths and, of course, the people there to worship. Having said that, it's absolutely a must, especially for mosques and other targeted houses of worship, to have security cameras, to have an armed guard, especially for major events, and especially if there's a school there. And we saw the benefit of this. Amin Abdullah, the security guard there, saved countless lives by combating these attackers, by engaging in a firefight with them, and scaring them away, and losing his life in the process. And so I can only imagine what would have happened if he hadn't been there at all. But it just goes to show you that even a security guard cannot stop the violence. That's why we have to stop the root of it, which is anti-Muslim hate, rampant anti-Muslim hate, tolerated by our government, spread by our government and certain media personalities. Addressing that is the best way to stop this ongoing threat to mosques. Geoff Bennett: You mentioned the security guard. When tragedies like this happen, we all too often focus on the gunmen, the motives. There's usually less attention on the victims. What more should we know about Amin Abdullah, this father of eight? Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Yes. Well, there were three members of the San Diego Muslim community murdered in this incident. Amin Abdullah, obviously, as the security guard, has been widely recognized for saving lives, but also the other two gentlemen there. One of them actually, we're told, ran into the building after Amin was killed and went into the building trying to help, and he himself was killed as well. Another brother there was just killed as a bystander. And so all three of these men were beloved, respected members of that community. The Islamic Center of San Diego is one of the most prominent mosques in California and across the country. And so this attack is horrific, and that's why the community is standing strongly with the families of the victims and doing everything they can to make sure that they are supported in this horrible time, and also to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else again in the future, God willing. Geoff Bennett: In the roughly 30 seconds we have left, the Associated Press reports that the manifesto that was left behind had hateful rhetoric toward Jewish people, Muslims, Islam, the LGBTQ community, Black people, women, the political left and right. At this point, what's the path forward here? What's it going to take to really lower the temperature Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Yes, look, this starts from the top down. As I said, if the president of the United States is engaging in open bigotry against various communities and members of Congress and governors in Texas and Florida, other states are doing that, it's no surprise you're going to see hateful rhetoric turning to hate crimes. So we have to start with our political leaders. They have got to stop fomenting hate against various Americans. This is all our country. Everyone has the right to be here and live in peace and worship in peace. And so we need our political leaders to stop spreading hate, because it is endangering lives. Geoff Bennett: Edward Ahmed Mitchell, thank you for your time this evening. We appreciate it. Edward Ahmed Mitchell: Thank you.

The Leftist conspiracy theory machine was alive and well as Miles Taylor, founder of the anti-Trump organization Defiance and former DHS Chief of Staff appeared on MS NOW’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle and peddled the same old election security conspiracies that the Democrats and anti-Trumpers have been screaming about for years now, much to Ruhle’s excitement. In response to Ruhle’s question about how concerned he was about election security this year, Taylor threw up his hands as he passionately declared that his concern was “Off the charts”: RUHLE: How concerned are you? I'm not going to say 'are you,' how concerned on a one to 10? TAYLOR: Off the charts! Off the charts concerned because Donald Trump has already shown us this year his willingness in Fulton County, where Ali was just pointing to it on the board, his willingness to go in and seize ballots. This was the great fear that folks had in 2020. Donald Trump himself said in January that he regrets not sending the National Guard in to seize ballots, when it looked like he was going to lose.  Taylor’s concern stemmed from his baseless belief that Trump had shown “his willingness to go in and seize ballots” in the 2026 midterms because of an investigation into Fulton County, Georgia, years after the 2020 election. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump said that some of his advisors in his first term asked him to launch an investigation on the potential hacking of digital voting machines. Glaring through both his glasses and the camera, Taylor also criticized “the whole election security architecture” as “woefully inadequate” to stop a domestic threat since it was set up to stop foreign actors. Of course, he mentioned the debunked ‘Russian collusion’ conspiracy theory before suggesting the President was “the person attacking our elections.”     Taylor then sought to appropriate “FAFO,” rebranding it as the “Fight Against Federal Overreach,” which he launched from his website defiance.org. Taylor’s so-called Fight Against Federal Overreach effort entailed local prosecutors threatening to sue ICE officers carrying out lawful deportations in the same vicinity as polling places: One of the things that we announced today at defiance.org is an effort that we launched called Fight Against Federal Overreach. FAFO. These are local prosecutors across America who announced this morning, if Donald Trump does things like send ICE agents to the polls to intimidate voters, those local prosecutors are going to sue them. They're going to charge them. They're going to put them in jail if they engage in illegal voter intimidation. We're talking about big city District Attorneys around this country who are saying, ‘no, no, no, no, no, we read the Constitution also. You can't do this.’ This claim was perhaps the most insane conspiracy theory of the many that Taylor pushed during his MS NOW appearance, and was specifically meant to intimidate ICE officers and stop them from doing their jobs. Of course, ICE does not take part in any kind of “illegal voter intimidation.” Their job is to arrest illegal alien criminals and remove them from our streets. Obviously, only American citizens are permitted to vote in our elections. American citizens need not worry about being detained by ICE, unless they are actively obstructing the ICE officers from doing their duty. As Taylor’s severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome reared its ugly head on The 11th Hour, Stephanie Ruhle touted, “Miles, you’re so fired up!” The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: MS NOW's The 11th Hour May 19, 2026 11:18:24 p.m. Eastern (…) STEPHANIE RUHLE: Miles, I would argue the most important part of elections is that they're free and fair. Today, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was pressed on why a DOJ Election Security Task Force was disbanded. Are you concerned about election security this year? MILES TAYLOR: Yeah, deeply concerned. I mean- RUHLE: Or, I should say, how concerned are you? I'm not going to say 'are you,' how concerned on a one to 10? TAYLOR: Off the charts! Off the charts concerned because Donald Trump has already shown us this year his willingness in Fulton County, where Ali was just pointing to it on the board, his willingness to go in and seize ballots. This was the great fear that folks had in 2020. Donald Trump himself said in January that he regrets not sending the National Guard in to seize ballots, when it looked like he was going to lose. A man who admits that is admitting he's willing to commit a crime. So I'm very worried about that.  But here's the thing, that Election Security Task Force that was set up when I was in the first Trump Administration, the whole election security architecture we set up was focused on protecting America against foreign adversaries meddling in our elections, like the Russians in 2016. And to our dismay, that structure we had set up was woefully inadequate, if the person attacking our elections was the president of the United States himself.  Now, I will say, Stephanie, though, that there's not a lack of opposition to what's happening with Donald Trump. In fact, one of the things that we announced today at defiance.org is an effort that we launched called Fight Against Federal Overreach. FAFO. These are local prosecutors across America who announced this morning, if Donald Trump does things like send ICE agents to the polls to intimidate voters, those local prosecutors are going to sue them. They're going to charge them. They're going to put them in jail if they engage in illegal voter intimidation. We're talking about big city District Attorneys around this country who are saying, ‘no, no, no, no, no, we read the Constitution also. You can't do this.’ So folks are stepping up against these things. They're preparing for what the Trump Administration might try to do. RUHLE: Hmm. I thought FAFO stood for something else. I guess I was wrong. Miles, you are so fired up, I’m going to have you - I’m going to ask you to stick around.

ABC and NBC broke in Wednesday with network special reports on the Justice Department’s historic indictments against Raúl Castro and five others in the deadly 1996 shootdown of aircraft related to the pro-freedom Brothers to the Rescue group that resulted in the deaths of four men. While NBC delivered a proper history lesson and gave no quarter to the murderous communist regime, ABC channeled its long history of excusing the regime by framing this as largely a Trump political play. ABC’s World News Tonight anchor David Muir opened by framing the announcement at Miami’s Freedom Tower on the 124th anniversary of Cuban independence through Trump-tinted lenses, telling viewers this was all about a “major escalation” and “rising tensions between the U.S. and Cuba.” Notice ABC's David Muir opened the network's Special Report on the DOJ/Castro indictments through the lens of Trump, Trump, Trump, such as here: “President Trump previously imposing a blockade of oil shipments to Cuba in an effort to continue to cripple Cuba’s economy.” pic.twitter.com/SPNeInKP3T — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2026 Muir huffed the murder charges of 94-year-old Castro came after Trump took foreign policy “action, of course, in Venezuela, then Iran” and, in Cuba, “impos[ed] a blockade of oil shipments to Cuba in an effort to continue to cripple Cuba’s economy.” “President Trump has said in recent months that the U.S. was in talks with Havana. He raised the possibility of a friendly takeover of Cuba, in his words. And the President has said Cuba is going to fall pretty soon in his words as well,” he added. Muir channeled his predecessors Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer by giving daylight to the commies. In 1989, Jennings gushed over Fidel Castro as having “delivered the most to those who had the least” and become “a model of development” on education, literacy, and “world-class” medical care. All of it, Jennings argued, served as “great success stories” to Castro’s (violent) revolution. In 1993, Sawyer swooned Raúl’s brother prevailed because of his “invincible certainty of their destiny” and, in 2008, said Fidel “knew life is a stage and played the part of the dashing revolutionary.” The only support before the press conference came from vague anecdotes from correspondent Matt Rivers, who said from Little Havana that “we’ve been seeing people drive past us here..., honking their horns, Cuban flags out the windows,” and some donning Make America Great Again hats. During the speeches, Muir dipped out and tag-teamed with chief legal analyst Dan Abrams to cast doubt on the indictment’s success: Disney's ABC News was, unsurprisingly, very skeptical of the Justice Department's indictment of Raul Castro and five others in the murders of four men from the Brothers to the Rescue in 1996 pic.twitter.com/TjEbvoOUeb — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2026 There was more vague talk from former longtime Univision correspondent Teresa Rodriguez, who followed on the themes of doubts about its success, but at least went further than Rivers in providing color on the jubilation in Miami: [F]or some of these people that I see in that audience today, some of them are relatives, one of which I spoke to yesterday. And you can see the smiles on their faces. They lost their loved ones, they lost their — their sons. So this is quite a day, a historic day for the Cuban exile community, not just here, but all over the world. After Saturday World News Tonight anchor and weekend Good Morning America co-host Whit Johnson relayed his recent regime-approved trip to Cuba and touted a defiant government as ordinary people suffer (which he did not assign blame), Muir offered the most laughable line of all about ABC having “been committed to covering the Cuban people for a very long time”: ABC’s David Muir, channeling predecessors Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer with their overt or back-door fawning over the Castro regime in communist Cuba... “ABC News has been committed to covering the Cuban people for a very long time. It was a decade ago. We took World News… pic.twitter.com/KBU9OhqQ5x — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2026 Once they aired Thomas’s questions to Blanche, Muir signed off with more skepticism, except to vaguely state “things are changing in Cuba.” It would be a vast understatement to say NBC was different. NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas — a Miami native and son of Cuban refugees — immediately declared it “a historic moment” with charges related to the death of four from “the humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue” and also noted the historic symbolism of the location and day to unseal the indictment. Llamas even stated out loud some “viewers across the country...may be a little confused” about the pomp and circumstance surrounding the roll out, so he delivered a history lesson of sorts about the men lost (some had served in the Vietnam War) and what Brothers to the Rescue accomplished. Correspondent Jesse Kirsch also pointed to how Brothers to the Rescue were “credited with saving upwards of 10,000 lives” and thus were not a “trivial” group but one that had a “real impact at a time when there were so many people in the dangerous, treacherous waters between Cuba and Florida trying to get here.” Tom @LlamasNBC explaining to those unaware of the importance of today’s DOJ indictment of Raul Castro and the Cuban regime’s deadly 1996 shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue plane... “[F]or our viewers across the country who are watching this, they may be a little confused… pic.twitter.com/IYj0GgxK7a — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2026 Longtime NBC correspondent Kelly O’Donnell was the lone voice to frame the indictment solely as a Trump-connected project, but still said many believe an indictment “will...write this 30-year wrong” with Secretary of State Marco Rubio having long opposed the Cuban regime as the son of Cuban immigrants. Llamas dug deeper on the history angle with Saturday NBC Nightly News anchor, longtime Telemundo anchor, and fellow Floridian Jose Diaz-Balart. In a fascinating series of explanations, Llamas focused on how the Castros had a spy network inside the United States that aided in the attack while Diaz-Balart detailed how the shootdowns took place (click the X post to read the transcript): WATCH: Important history lesson on the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown from NBC’s Tom @LlamasNBC and @JDBalart.... Llamas: “The charge here may be murder, and it actually may go further than that. It may be premeditated murder. And the reason for that is that we now know that… pic.twitter.com/Xb9Iz0dA2e — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2026 Following the event, Diaz-Balart relayed the angry reaction from the current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel falsely claiming the Brothers to the Rescue was “a narco-terrorist” group.  Diaz-Balart also praised the indictment as “a speaking indictment” and thus “not just the declaration of the charges, but...a narrative that points very directly to Raúl Castro’s responsibility in any decision that was taken to knock down those planes” and the spy network Llamas referenced earlier. Once O’Donnell said her piece detailing how the indictment provided “a sense of the history of the case” but likely didn’t reveal all the cards and evidence the government has, senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez chimed in with his own views, particularly the stark change from then-President Barack Obama’s chummy 2016 visit to see Raúl Castro (click “expand”): But you remember, Tom, in the Maduro raid, a lot of Maduro security were Cubans. So, there are a lot of questions about how this moves forward. We have reporting over the last several months that President Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated by the Cuban government remaining in power, despite the fuel shortages that have erupted across the island. And if I could point out, Tom, this really points to over the last decade or so, the sharp difference in policy from the Trump administration to the Obama administration before it. I was there in 2014, 2015, with that thaw of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S. And you remember that last speaker — the Florida Attorney General — mentioned that he didn’t name him by name, but President Obama actually attended a baseball game with Raul Castro in Havana, and that was a reference to that. Certainly, Kelly was referring to the political dynamics of all this. But we see just how far the Trump administration has come from the Obama administration before it, making a calculation that it does not want any sort of talking with the Cuban regime. It’s losing patience with it. And the CIA director’s visit there last week, certainly the leaking of pictures from that from that visit amounted to an escalation of the pressure campaign. And you’re right, that is the major question. What happens next? Will the U.S. now somehow go into Cuba and bring Raul Castro back here to face these charges? He turns 95 years old next month. Llamas closed with a poignant five-minute interview of Miriam de la Pena, whose son Mario was one of the four men killed in the shoot down. POWERFUL: NBC’s Tom @LlamasNBC interviews Miriam de la Pena, the mother of Mario de la Pena, one of the Americans killed in the deadly 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown by the Cuban military, about her emotions hearing the U.S. has indicted Raul Castro and five others in her… pic.twitter.com/9V4OuIBOB9 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 20, 2026 Asked what this moment meant to her, she emphatically told Llamas this is “the first day of us being on the road to find justice” and the first time her son and the three others killed “are looked at as human beings who were murdered under a dictatorship, who extended their tentacles to international waters to kill American citizens. And that cannot be allowed.” “I think it’s the right thing to do...You kill American citizens, the United States needs to defend those citizens. You and I could have been killed. The United States needs to stand up for its citizens. What are we here for? Protect our citizens from murderers...I feel like we’re — we’re human beings. Before, we were ignored. We’re not ignored anymore...There were four innocent men trying to do good for society, and they did not deserve to die that way,” she later added. Llamas closed by asking what she’d say to Raúl Castro. Here was her answer: You are going to get what you deserve. You are being called by what you are today. You are a murderer. Now, you will have, in the United States — your rights will be will not be violated like you violate the rights of the Cuban people. You will have rights in the United States being respected and you will serve a just sentence if you’re found guilty, which I have no doubt that you will be found guilty. “Miriam de la Pena, your husband, I know, is right next to you. We thank you so much for talking to us. We are sorry for what you and your family have struggled through and gone through over these 30 years, and I know today is a monumental day for you. We shall see what shall happen in the days and weeks ahead,” Llamas said in response. To see the relevant transcripts from May 20, click here (for ABC) and here (for NBC).