In a continued meltdown after President Trump’s press conference and continuous Truth Social posts, Tuesday’s Morning Joe on MS NOW continuously claimed Trump was about to commit war crimes in Iran, except for newly signed MS NOW analyst John Kirby, who acted as a voice of reason as he put trust in military leaders instead. Even after Kirby’s moment, during the 9 a.m. hour, co-host Jonathan Lemire called Trump “genocidal” as guests Andrew Ross Sorkin and Eugene Robinson said the U.S. will become a villain. Late in the program, host Jonathan Lemire accused the president of threats of genocide: Let’s just repeat for a moment the President of the United States and his post this morning. That is threatening a war crime. That is threatening something genocidal if he follows through with this, and perhaps, perhaps it's just a bluff, perhaps it's a negotiating tactic (...)   Of course, 9 AM host Jonathan Lemire just a few hours later called Trump's statements "genocidal." Lemire later compared Trump to Putin and Kim Jong Un, before the NYT's Peter Baker gave renewed praise to the months-old "illegal orders" video from Democrats. pic.twitter.com/zA3Wf0i1b8 — Nick (@nspin310) April 7, 2026   He then immediately compared Trump to global villains like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Peter Baker of The New York Times decided to use the moment to praise the six lawmakers who made the infamous “illegal orders” video: So this is what exactly those six Democratic members of Congress foreshadowed when they released that video a few months back, when they said that members of the military should remember that they are obligated under the law to not follow illegal orders (...)   CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin said the US could become the villain: “I think there's a real question about whether you can go from being a - we can go from potentially being the victim of Iran to, depending on how this is executed, to being a villain.” pic.twitter.com/itWyO2Pw3r — Nick (@nspin310) April 7, 2026   CNBC’s Sorkin and MS NOW analyst Robinson claimed the US had become the villain, as Sorkin said: “I think there's a real question about whether you can go from being a - we can go from potentially being the victim of Iran to, depending on how this is executed, to being a villain.” At the end of the segment, Lemire added his “genocidal” line along with the U.S. as the “villain”, as he now claimed that's what he is hearing from “alarmed officials in Washington. A former figure of Biden White House briefings, Kirby made his debut as an analyst earlier in the show.  One of the first questions posed to him was by Mike Barnicle, who asked if there was a “destruction” of Iran amid a conversation about infrastructure, “What do you think that does to the enhanced and legitimate reputation of our great United States Military?”   New MS NOW National Security Analyst John Kirby was the voice of reason on Tuesday's Morning Joe, as, amid cries of war crimes, he calmly said his "expectation" was the US Military would carry out targeted strikes on sites "used to support the IRGC" after the 8 pm deadline. pic.twitter.com/iJ4HSI6nMS — Nick (@nspin310) April 7, 2026   Kirby then said strikes on civilian infrastructure with “no military use or purpose” would constitute war crimes, but, in one of the first moments of reason on MS NOW since the Trump presser, Kirby gave a reality check on what the military would actually do: But, I really don't think - well, let me say my expectation is that the military leaders, General Kaine, Admiral Cooper, they know well those two conventions and they know well where the lines are in terms of international humanitarian law. (...) And I suspect that if we see today or tonight, you know, additional bombing, you'll see justification from the Pentagon about why these targets were hit and what and how these targets were being used to support the IRGC or military uses by the regime. A new trend began after October 7th, that every new war had represented an apparent genocide. If there was a want to not dilute the term, more of the unhinged at MS NOW should start to listen to their newly minted analyst, John Kirby. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Morning Joe April 7, 2026 7:16:12 AM Eastern (...) MIKE BARNICLE: And, Admiral, let me ask you this. You've devoted most of your life to the service of this country in the United States Navy, and the possibility that what will happen tonight at 8:00 or might be going on right now is a precursor to 8 p.m. tonight, the destruction of power plants turning a country dark, the destruction of water facilities, turning a country desperately in need of water and unable to find water.  What do you think that does to the enhanced and legitimate reputation of our great United States military? In the spine of what America represents and has represented to the world for generations. What does that do potentially to our reputation? JOHN KIRBY: If, in fact, we indiscriminately struck civilian infrastructure that had no military use or purpose, that would constitute war crimes under both The Hague and the Geneva Conventions, and certainly that would completely eradicate any credibility that the United States has in the world in terms of our leadership and our standing.  But, I really don't think - well, let me say my expectation is that the military leaders, General Kaine, Admiral Cooper, they know well those two conventions and they know well where the lines are in terms of international humanitarian law. And while the political leadership, Secretary Hegseth and the president can bluster all they want about obliterating targets and bombing them back into the stone ages, I'm convinced that the military leadership knows exactly how far they can go. And I suspect that if we see today or tonight, you know, additional bombing, you'll see justification from the Pentagon about why these targets were hit and what and how these targets were being used to support the IRGC or military uses by by the regime. (...) 9:03:28 AM Eastern JONATHAN LEMIRE: Let’s just repeat for a moment the President of the United States and his post this morning. That is threatening a war crime. That is threatening something genocidal if he follows through with this and perhaps, perhaps its just a bluff, perhaps it's a negotiating tactic, an 11th hour push to get the Iranians to the bargaining table. But even just issuing that threat from the Oval Office is a remarkable escalation, and something we have never before seen from any president of the United States.  With us, we have now MS NOW senior national security reporter David Rohde, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Peter Baker, contributing writer to The Atlantic, Eugene Robinson, and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, Molly Jong-Fast. Our thanks to all of you for being with us this morning.  Peter Baker, start with you about the president's post this morning. And we know he is, you know, fond of over the top language. He is fond of fire and fury, threats and the like. But this, to me, is something entirely new. And even if it is, does prove to just be a bluff of some sort or a bargaining tactic. This is still a new place for a President of the United States. This is the rhetoric we associate with people like Vladimir Putin, with people like Kim Jong Un, with the monsters of history. And yet we have heard it now from the sitting president. PETER BAKER: Yeah, absolutely. Right. He's using the language of war crimes in a way that no other American president, certainly in our lifetime, ever has. I mean, America traditionally has tried to occupy the high ground when it comes to wars. Wars are fought only out of necessity, not out of spite or out of emotion or out of bombastity, And that presidents, when they talk about war, talk about achieving military objectives, talk about, you know, targeting military targets, not wiping out a civilization, wiping out a civilization is the language of war crimes.  And this is going to be, as you rightly say, it's - you never know with Trump, right? Obviously, this could be just him chest thumping. He likes to do that. He likes to shock. He likes to threaten. He likes to look tough. He's almost 80 years old. He wants to look like a tough guy. But you know, it's a real test, I think for the US military at this point because the us military is bound by law not to follow illegal orders, war crimes, if that's what he ends up ordering, would be illegal.  So, this is the this is what exactly those six Democratic members of Congress foreshadowed when they released that video a few months back, when they said that members of the military should remember that they are obligated under the law to not follow illegal orders, they got punished or tried to be punished by the Trump Administration for it. In fact, the Trump Administration tried to literally prosecute them and throw them in prison for stating, you know what the law says. And now, of course, that looks different in the context of what we're seeing today.  And the question is, what will the military actually do when push comes to shove? LEMIRE: Peter Baker, you're so right to note that the military has an obligation not to follow illegal orders. These would seem like illegal orders. What will they do? Also, what will Republicans in Congress do? Where is the Senate? Where is the house? How can they stand for this?  (...) 9:10:23 AM Eastern ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Look, I think that most people who are focused on oil prices right now think that if this happens tonight, you're looking at much higher oil prices and for a very long time. That's the fundamental issue here. And so you're seeing these comments from the president. I think there's a real question about whether you can go from being a we can go from potentially being the victim of Iran to, depending on how this is executed, to being a villain. And I think that's that's a real question in the in terms of not just the markets, but the sort of larger geopolitical question. (...) 9:15:20 AM Eastern EUGENE ROBINSON: There are still lawyers in the Pentagon. And one wonders what they are telling the commanders and the Secretary of Defense right now that, no, we cannot wipe out or try to wipe out an entire civilization. That is the very definition of a war crime. And it is hard to believe that the United States could actually do this, that - And make no mistake, the United States then does become the villain, period. It becomes the villain in the world. LEMIRE: Yeah, the US would be the villain if this were to happen. It would be a war crime, genocidal. Again, words that I'm getting from alarmed officials in Washington if the president were to follow through. (...)

While it’s certain to not always be the case, Sunday’s 60 Minutes offered a possible harbinger of things to come if editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is to turn CBS News into a network with journalism that appeals to all Americans. The episode including a lengthy piece blasting California’s high-speed rail boondoggle and then a closing minute from Christian evangelist Franklin Graham about Easter. Correspondent John Wertheim laid bare the ugly reality of how America went from having trains as a central part of the country’s history to an afterthought as a jumping off point to an attempt by California for a bullet train “connecting L.A. and San Francisco has lurched, derailed, cost billions and may never happen.” He opened with a fake-out, touting a reliable high-speed rail system before admitting it’s in Morocco. In contrast, he noted California voters passed nearly 28 years ago “a ballot measure for a train connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours” for “estimated price tag” of $33 billion and expected completion in 2020. Still thinking of how incredible this ‘60 Minutes’ story was about how much of a disaster California’s Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail project was. Just incredible. John Wertheim’s intro: “It’s hard to exaggerate the role of the train in the American story, or the… pic.twitter.com/I0JrkSlQEM — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 7, 2026 Unsurprisingly, the current state of the project is less than ideal: Status update: today, the state’s high-speed rail authority is preparing to lay its first tracks at roughly the same cost. Only, slight course correction here: Instead of L.A. to San Francisco, it will run one-third of that distance, connecting — wait for it — the metropolis of Bakersfield and Merced, population 96,000. Oh, and when will it open? 2033. Maybe. Central Valley-area Congressman Vince Fong (R-CA) was surprisingly given prime billing off the top and told Wertheim this “nightmare is the probably quintessential example of government waste and mismanagement.” Wertheim then paraphrased more of what Fong told him: “He says that when California voters first approved high-speed rail, the promise and price tag were more marketing campaign than realistic projection.” But when Wertheim took these concerns to California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin and rail board member Anthony Williams, Omishakin seemed to argue voters are the real problem in this project for not understanding how difficult it would be to make a reality: California California's Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin first blames VOTERS for the state's failure to not build any high speed rail. "There were mistakes made. Some of the criticism on this project, I think, are very fair... I don't think the voters fully understood,… pic.twitter.com/zrBIfW1Yby — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 6, 2026 The next portion focused on how red tape dooms such herculean ambition. Wertheim explained for the uninitiated that, “[t]o get the necessary political buy-in from the whole state, the plan called for the train to run inland, threading the farmland of the Central Valley.” Left unsaid was that, in essence, the call was to run it through the red part of the state because the blue supermajority doesn’t want it cutting through their neighborhoods. Even that wasn’t enough: “Yet, the rail authority hadn’t answered basic questions, like precisely where it could lay down its tracks, what’s known as right-of-way.” Along with land disputes, Wertheim added other pitfalls included “California’s exacting environmental regulations, which triggered all manner of reviews, lawsuits, and delays” and “high U.S. labor and construction costs.” 60 Minutes exposes how California's burdensome environmental regulations prevent anything from being done, particularly with their high-speed rail: "California’s exacting environmental regulations, which triggered all manner of reviews, lawsuits, and delays. As anyone who's… pic.twitter.com/UuEB2WAnNr — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 5, 2026 After pointing out far-left Governor Gavin Newsom “didn’t respond to repeated interview requests,” Wertheim said the project changed to run just in the Central Valley as years went by and with nothing to show for it, even though it’d be “a route few clamored for and fewer are likely to ride.” The visuals of empty concrete beams and overpasses (sans any tracks) put the project’s waste into perspective, bolstered by Wertheim sharing that “[l]ocals here jokingly refer to it as their own Stonehenge.” 60 Minutes EXPOSES California's incomplete high speed rail system, locals in the Central Valley call it "Stonehenge": "Locals here jokingly refer to it as their own Stonehenge. Ideally, these bridges and viaducts will one day be used to support California high-speed rail. But… pic.twitter.com/FLEDroMPmh — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 5, 2026 “[F]or now, these are curiosities in a field, monuments to promises that haven’t been met, and plans that haven’t been executed,” he added. He took a detour for the next few minutes to spotlight Brightline, a private rail company aiming to build a high-speed train that would consist of a two-hour span Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2029 (versus a five-hour drive). It currently has a semi-high-speed line in Florida spanning Orlando to Miami and goes 125 miles per hour, but here again, Wertheim found problems with it (even though it should be a leftist dream) (click “expand”): WERTHEIM: Cultural questions aside, Brightline’s Florida trains run at street level through crowded neighborhoods. And according to numbers compiled by the Miami Herald and local public radio, more than 200 people have been hit and killed by the trains in the near-decade since operations began. Brightline says that running rail in the desert out West — where track crossings won’t be at street level — will be a safer proposition. Then there are the finances: the stratospheric costs of building and running a rail line vastly outstrip revenues. Analysts have downgraded Brightline’s debt to junk, raising questions about private rail as a business. [TO REININGER] To what extent, big picture, do you worry about the future financial viability of Brightline? REININGER: The business has built slower than we originally expected it to build. We thought we would be carrying more passengers today than we are. The business is, in fact, growing month over month, year over year. That’s a great thing. That solidifies in our mind the viability of the business. WERTHEIM: Brightline’s West Coast project has already received some federal funding and is hoping for a $6 billion loan from the Trump administration. REININGER: If you look around the world, for the most part, the infrastructure systems are funded by the public sector. WERTHEIM [TO REININGER]: You do see a role for government here? REININGER: Absolutely. We — we welcome it. The rest of his piece was on the government-run disaster in California with officials telling him this short span from small town to small would cost $126 billion, which Wertheim acknowledged is “more funding than Amtrak has received in its history and still leaves a shortfall of roughly $90 billion.” Wild stat -- the current portion of Gavin Newsom's so-called high-speed rail running from small towns to small towns and not connecting LA and SF is now up to $126 billion in cost, which is far more than Amtrak has received in its entire history. pic.twitter.com/SoZnwo7LTq — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 7, 2026 Liberals can melt down all they want about this reality check, but the first story — led by Scott Pelley — was more up their alley as it focused on the soaring cost of health insurance and the free health care clinic charity known as Ram. Shifting to the end of the show, CBS’s other supposed sin was giving Graham — the son of the late American preacher Billy Graham — a few minutes to talk about the connection between Christianity and America (click “expand”): Evangelist Franklin Graham, who's preached in all 50 U.S. states, says he believes faith in God is the value that played the biggest role in shaping the nation. pic.twitter.com/9Jc6pG07ct — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 5, 2026 Faith. Faith in God is the value that most shaped America. Remember, the pilgrims, they came to this land to find freedom to live out their faith. And it’s people of faith who have been the bedrock, the driving force behind our nation. In years past, where did people turn after a disaster? Not FEMA, not to the government. It was the church that took them in, fed them, gave them shelter, clothed them. It was people of faith who established our health care in this country. Our higher education was started by people of faith. Harvard, Yale, Princeton were founded to train ministers of the gospel. From the remote villages of Alaska to the tip of the Florida Keys today, you’ll find houses of worship and people of faith making a difference. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I want all people to know that God loves them, that He cares for them. So, I see faith as the most important defining value in our nation and in every single life. The horror! Check out the vile, unhinged replies and quoted replies seething over an X post of Graham’s simple message about how Americans have turned to churches for education, health care, relief after disaster, and even a search for our meaning. To see the relevant CBS transcripts from April 7, click here and here.

With the words “he has gone insane” over his shoulder as if it was a cry for help from his producer, MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell crammed a lot of crazy into just two-and-a-half minutes of Monday’s The Last Word. After praising the Iranian regime for shooting down an American F-15E because it “humiliated” President Trump, he decried the rescue operation as a notion because 80 years ago 120,000 Americans were prisoners of war during WWII. “[A]nd they humiliated Donald Trump by proving him wrong, by shooting down his planes, shooting down two of his planes,” O’Donnell boasted as if Trump himself owned the jets, nearly 12 minutes into his longwinded opening monologue. With that statement, O’Donnell let the mask slip on his ghoulish nature. He was happy about the shootdown - the shootdown that could have killed the two American airmen and/or could have seen them captured and tortured - because it “humiliated” the orange man. It proved O’Donnell wanted American service members hurt or killed because he could use them against Trump. It demonstrated why, multiple times during the war, he demanded Trump’s son Barron be forcibly conscripted and sent to the ‘frontlines,’ that way he could be hurt or killed and used by him. Keeping the hate train rolling, O’Donnell then took issue with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for declaring “we leave no man behind” because it didn’t use gender inclusive language (Click “expand”): O’DONNEL: And today at the White House, that brilliant rescue was described by the secretary of defense and by General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a long standing American military rule of never leaving anyone behind. HEGSETH: We leave no man behind. O'DONNELL: That is, of course, the old school version of the idea. Back when only men flew American military planes, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it this way. CAINE: We leave no one behind. O'DONNELL: The general knows, unlike Pete Hegseth, that that could have been a woman they were trying to rescue, and it might be a woman the next time. O’Donnell, who never served in America’s armed forces, had a twisted smile on his face as he then decried the very notion of never leaving a man behind. Why would he scoff at such a thing? Because there were American POWs over 80 years ago.   In 2-and-a-half minutes, MS NOW's Lawrence O'Donnell touts how Iran "humiliated" Trump by shooting down the planes, decried Hegseth saying "we leave no man behind" because it was not gender inclusive, decries the notion of rescuing 1 airman like that because 120,000 Americans… pic.twitter.com/HmkTbIYCtK — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 7, 2026   “But this 21st century notion that we leave no one behind ignores the 120,000 prisoners of war held by German and Japanese forces in World War II for years, who were left behind,” he chided. He then attacked the ideal of never leaving a man behind because late Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was shot down and captured: “And the idea of using 155 aircraft and hundreds of military personnel on an immediate rescue mission for a single person of any rank, was inconceivable in World War II or in Vietnam, where we left John McCain behind.” What an insulting thing to say about the men who defeated Nazism and imperialism, the very things MS NOW had been claiming were emanating from the Trump White House. Insulting to those who did everything they could, including putting their own lives on the line to rescue their comrades. It’s ridiculous for O’Donnell - who again, knew absolutely nothing about service and self-sacrifice - to argue such rescue missions were “inconceivable in World War II or in Vietnam,” because they managed to pull off their own daring rescue missions without the technology we have today. He was insulting men like Paul “Pappy” Gunn who went all Liam Neeson on the Japanese to rescue his family; and the Japanese-Americans of the 442 Infantry Division who broke through German lines to rescue the 1st Battalion of the 141 Infantry Regiment. To really poke a hole in O’Donnell’s revisionist history, checkout Medal of Honor recipient Roy Benavidez of the 82nd Airborne who literally jump on a helicopter with nothing but a medic bag and knife to go rescue his fellow soldiers from the Vietnam jungle. And the 11th Airborne Division who carried out an epic raid on the Los Banos prison camp the Japanese set up. They rescued a little baby girl.     And that’s not to mention that many were captured because they were buying time for others to escape. Others like Hiroshi “Hershey” Miyamura in Korea, the soldiers of Fort Drum in the Philippines, and the 22 Americans of the Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon of the 99th Infantry Division who blunted the German advance at the Battle of Lanzerath Ridge, which was critical to the Allies winning the Battle of the Bulge. And while O’Donnell was using McCain as a bludgeon, McCain chose to reject an offer to be released from captivity early because he was wanted others to be released first. That didn’t stop O’Donnell from praising the North Vietnamese. “In fact, he was injured in the crash of his plane in a lake in Hanoi and was helped out of the water by the North Vietnamese people. His plane was there to attack,” he said.     Of course, O’Donnell was ignorant of history. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: MS NOW’s The Last Word April 6, 2026 10:11:47 p.m. Eastern (…) O'DONNELL: ... and they humiliated Donald Trump by proving him wrong, by shooting down his planes, shooting down two of his planes. The pilot of that plane was rescued within hours of the shootdown. The still unnamed, seriously injured colonel had to hide for 48 hours before the rescue team could find him and save him without losing any other military personnel in that very risky mission. They did lose two rescue planes worth $100 million each that they had to leave behind in Iran and destroy as they were leaving. And today at the White House, that brilliant rescue was described by the secretary of defense and by General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a long standing American military rule of never leaving anyone behind. HEGSETH: We leave no man behind. O'DONNELL: That is, of course, the old school version of the idea. Back when only men flew American military planes, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it this way. CAINE: We leave no one behind. O'DONNELL: The general knows, unlike Pete Hegseth, that that could have been a woman they were trying to rescue, and it might be a woman the next time. But this 21st century notion that we leave no one behind ignores the 120,000 prisoners of war held by German and Japanese forces in World War II for years, who were left behind. And the idea of using 155 aircraft and hundreds of military personnel on an immediate rescue mission for a single person of any rank, was inconceivable in World War II or in Vietnam, where we left John McCain behind. John McCain was shot down in the skies over North Vietnam, and at the time, no one tried to rescue him. In fact, he was injured in the crash of his plane in a lake in Hanoi and was helped out of the water by the North Vietnamese people. His plane was there to attack. (...)

With all of the media talking about President Trump’s latest threats directed towards Iran’s bridges and power plants, former Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd joined former CNN reporter and the eponymous host of the So What with Chris Cillizza podcast on Tuesday to suggest that while Americans are worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons, they should be more concerned with the fact that Trump currently does. While talking about an Axios article that featured a “U.S. administration official” calling Trump the most “the most bloodthirsty, like a mad dog” member of the administration and that he makes Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio look live doves by comparison, Cillizza declared, “Donald Trump as a bloodthirsty mad dog is not one that I mean, I wouldn't say this about— I don't want any of my presidents to be described as a bloodthirsty mad dog when you do have the nuclear arsenal, when you do have the military might that he reminds us we do have so often.”   “You got to ask the question, we’re worried about a radical in Iran getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. What about what’s going on in our country?” – @ChuckTodd on @ChrisCillizza’s So What podcast posted Tuesday on Substack and YouTube. “I can see him [Trump] talking himself… pic.twitter.com/8S5TYSu38n — Brent Baker

On April 2, The New York Times published a surprising exposé about ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s fundraising machine: “ActBlue May Have Misled Congress on Vetting Foreign Donations, Its Lawyers Warned.” But while The Times’s willingness to break this embarrassing story about the DNC raised more than a few eyebrows, the ensuing total lack of coverage on left-wing broadcast and cable TV networks has come as less of a surprise. MRC analysts examined all coverage on major liberal broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS) and cable (CNN and MS NOW) networks from April 2 through the evening of April 6, 2026, and found not one word about this scandal.  The Times’s report described a 2023 letter to the House Administration Committee in which ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones represented her organization’s safeguards against improper foreign donations as thorough and “multilayered.” However, according to the reporting, ActBlue’s own outside lawyers apparently warned that that representation was dangerously inaccurate, and put the organization at “substantial risk” of a criminal investigation.  Worse still, one of the memos argued it appeared as though ActBlue had “accepted and/or facilitated” potentially “knowing and willful” illegal campaign contributions from foreign entities. Obviously, the story’s potential to embarrass the Democratic Party seems a sufficient explanation for why none of these seven networks were willing to touch the story. But their avoidance also has the potential to grant them political ammunition to use against the Trump administration in the future. Because none of these networks have alerted their viewers to the serious nature of the allegations against ActBlue, those audiences would likely be alarmed and outraged if the Trump administration were to — seemingly out of nowhere — launch a criminal investigation into such a vital organ of their political rivals. To anyone not familiar with The Times’s reporting, it would appear as though the administration were engaged in corrupt lawfare. In fact, MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace has already attempted to employ something similar to that tactic. On the April 4 edition of Deadline: White House, Wallace read an excerpt from a later New York Times piece whose authors were attempting to sound the alarm about a “weaponized” Justice Department: This is how The Times reports it: “Bondi and Blanche got the President’s message, stepping up efforts to investigate several other Trump targets, including the Democratic fundraising group ActBlue, John Brennan, former CIA director, and Cassidy Hutchinson, whom the President has accused of lying about his actions on January 6th, according to two officials briefed on the effort.” That reading by Wallace was the only mention of ActBlue we were able to find on any of the networks we examined between April 2 and April 6. What makes the silence all the more deafening is The New York Times’s April 2 report. Broadcast and cable stations alike routinely take cues from the “paper of record,” often treating a Times piece about a Democrat scandal as permission for them to address that scandal themselves on-air. After the 2020 election, for example, CBS went more than two years without recognizing the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop — but when The New York Times explicitly acknowledged it in late 2022, the network almost immediately followed suit.  At a glance, the ActBlue blackout of across all left-wing TV news seems like a fairly routine instance bias, given the story’s potential to hurt the DNC politically. But when one considers who broke this story, the TV void appears all the more shameless.