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

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

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

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

With an appearance on Friday’s CBS Mornings, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss made her formal on-air debut on one of the network’s flagship newscasts and she made it count as it was to both promote Saturday’s airing of a town hall she had taped earlier this week with Erika Kirk and set the tone for what should be the network’s future of embracing a diversity of views. The fullest depiction came in the second half of her appearance as featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers echoed the need for honest debate, so he made sure to tell viewers Erika’s late husband “Charlie Kirk was controversial in his life” and “[s]ome of his critics called his organization racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic.” After a long clip of Weiss asking Erika about some of Charlie’s comments that said “critics” would label as incendiary, Duthiers followed up by wondering what Weiss would say to those declaring it “harmful to platform” the Kirks. Watch as Weiss leveled a response that will hopefully serve as a north star for CBS News and any liberal network looking to regain the public’s trust after decades of self-inflicted hits and overinflated egos (click “expand” to read in full): MORE OF THIS, PLEASE: Important comments from CBS News editor-in-chief @BariWeiss to colleague @VladDuthiersCBS about having conversations with those we disagree with, even if you may think someone is controversial and wrong... CBS’s Vladimir Duthiers: “So, Bari, when I… pic.twitter.com/Sw2xHrgV7w — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 12, 2025   I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that we shouldn’t be able to speak across divides. That doesn’t mean that there are not lines. The question, of course, is whether or not Charlie Kirk crossed those lines and, in my view, you hear me quote many of the controversial things he said — needless to say, there are many things Charlie Kirk said in his life that I vehemently disagree with, but, to me, that’s not the point. The point is that we are walking into an abyss as a country if we accept the idea that words are violence, but violence, if directed at the right targets, is acceptable. I fundamentally reject that world view. The entire point of our democracy, the whole premise of it as we’re entering our 250th year is that we solve our problems by persuasion. We solve our problems by talking to one another. We don’t solve our problems by shooting one another in the neck as happened that day at that Utah college and so, to me, especially as we’re living in a world where you can live next door to someone and if you have different things on your social media feed, you can live in a different reality — and so, the point of this conversation, even if it makes some people uncomfortable, even if they disagree with something they heard on stage, I disagreed with some I heard on stage. The point, that’s the whole nature of the democratic process and this conversation and this whole series that we’re going to be announcing in the coming days, the point is to revive that in a moment this country needs it. More than ever. Going to break, co-host and incoming CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil doubled down on this and, while perfectly accurate, need to be repeated over and over going forward in this new era after, again, a decades-long stench of bias: [I]f you’re watching the news on whatever channel you’re watching, you agree with everything you hear, you’re getting it wrong and second, if you’re only getting those one lines as somehow a summary of a person’s whole life or way of thinking, that’s not true persuasion and that’s not democracy. As we wrote when Dokoupil was named Evening News anchor, count on NewsBusters to continue providing complete coverage of CBS and calling balls and strikes as to whether this new thinking prevails, fails, or is merely lip service. But rewinding to the beginning, Dokoupil set the tone by playing a clip of Kirk in the town hall telling Weiss she “never agree[s] with political violence” and while “we can blame everyone else” from the perpetrator to elected officials, real change starts when we all “tak[e] responsibility.” Back live, Dokoupil asked Weiss to explain why she had Kirk serve as the lead-off for what will be a series of CBS News townhalls at a time when “there are tough conversations and people often don’t feel they can have them because they can’t speak openly about certain topics and ideas.” Weiss first stated the reality that, as a result of her husband’s murder, Erika is now leading “the most important conservative organization in the country” and thus will have enormous sway “over the direction of the right, especially after Trump.” Having said that, Weiss gave CBS News viewers a perspective that was likely unfamiliar to many of their liberal base, which was the country’s in a dangerous place because someone was murdered “practicing the most fundamental of American rights” in “trying to persuade people with words” and the fallout has devolved into celebrations and conspiracy theories: .@BariWeiss in her @CBSMornings debut, promoting her town hall tomorrow with @MrsErikaKirk and taking aim at those who celebrated Charlie’s assassination and the conspiracy theorists claiming she had something to do it... “I think Erika Kirk is a victim of what could be a very,… pic.twitter.com/lU3t3Vrlw0 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 12, 2025   “What matters is that because — she speaks about this in the interview, the brain rot that social media is allowing to spread, the way that it is detaching us from humanity, from our ability to talk to one another and our ability to discern the truth from just out and out lies is something that is incredibly important as a theme,” Weiss added. Co-host Gayle King asked Weiss to weigh in on Erika embracing her Christian faith in this time of enormous pain. Weiss replied that, as someone’s not Christian, Kirk’s belief in Christ was been “powerful” to witness and that someone could hold the duality of forgiving the alleged shooter while still embracing the need for him to face the criminal justice system. CBS’s @BariWeiss on @MrsErikaKirk’s Christian faith being her rock since Charlie’s murder... “I’m not Christian, but bearing witness to something that in her is clearly very deeply held and sincere was quite powerful and powerful for everyone in the audience. I think the thing… pic.twitter.com/34YnGxotsV — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 12, 2025 To see the relevant CBS transcript from December 12, click here.