Friday’s Washington Week with The Atlantic on PBS was more feistily anti-Trump than usual, with moderator Jeffrey Goldberg leading the panel into various anti-Trump segments, including the president’s fraught relationship with the mainstream press. Goldberg used Trump’s spat with two female reporters in the White House press pool to label Trump, an equal-opportunity insulter, as a sexist, while defending the honor of Trump-hating ABC News reporter Mary Bruce. JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Leigh Ann, let’s go to this issue of the relationship between Trump and the press. It’s not hard to notice that while he can express contempt and anger toward male reporters, he seems to be bothered, especially by female reporters here. Watch just a couple of moments of this with me. DONALD TRUMP clip: Quiet. Quiet, Piggy. I think you are a terrible reporter. It`s the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who`s highly respected, asking him a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question. You`re a terrible person and a terrible reporter. GOLDBERG: What is going on here, do you think with him? Is it just pure misogyny where he has a double standard, that he believes that reporters should not behave in a subordinate way? LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Yes. I mean, the word, insubordinate, just speaks so broadly about how he thinks. Caldwell had to admit that for a sexist, Trump has oddly surrounded himself with prominent female staffers, though she found a loophole to maintain that the president was still sexist. CALDWELL: But I will say on woman -- on the female thing, women reporters notice this. It is a topic of conversation among me and my friends constantly about how he treats female reporters. I will say, if you speak to someone like Kellyanne Conway, who says Donald Trump is great to women, look, she was the first female campaign manager, first female chief of staff, that there's high level women all around him, but those are women who are not challenging him. Those are women who are there to support him. And reporters are there to challenge the president, and that's what he doesn't like. Goldberg’s fellow Atlantic journalist Toluse Olorunnipa also said Trump’s recent attacks contained “real animosity” and were “steeped in misogyny and also seem really personal.” New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker went on a tangent about the White House press corps becoming Trump’s personal pep squad, with right-leaning outlets getting more access (as if it the press pool was ideologically balanced before Trump came along). There was plenty of snark directed at those new right-wing media companies. Peter Baker: ….Here's the consequence of the White House taking over control of the White House press pool, which no other president, Republican or Democrat, had ever done. They now control who is in that room. And what that means is that there are fewer mainstream journalism outlets, or whatever phrase we want use, and a lot more of these outlets that are frankly propaganda or politically, ideologically in favor. Goldberg: What are their names just so people at home know what we're talking about? Peter Baker: Well, I mean, obviously, Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend is in there. And I remember the scene -- Goldberg: That's the name of the network, Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend television network. Peter Baker: I'll let the networks speak for themselves. Jonathan Karl: Michael Lindell's network. Goldberg: Michael Lindell, the pillow guy, yes. ABC’s Karl repeatedly stuck up for his network’s chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce, another Trump target, who previously parroted happy talk about President Joe Biden’s mental fitness and even provided his team her questions in advance. Karl: So, the public, of course, doesn't see a difference it doesn't understand. And the fewer and fewer actual reporters in there challenging him, like Mary Bruce, the more and more he gets angry about that. Baker piled on, claiming “a lot more of these outlets that are frankly propaganda or politically, ideologically in favor." So no big change from the old days of the White House press corps, then?

PBS (and its natural liberal fans) love abortion. Pushing abortion pills after the repeal of Roe v. Wade is heroic in their eyes. On Wednesday's PBS News Hour, health care reporter Sarah Varney spent almost ten minutes glamorizing an "underground network" of abortion pill distributors in pro-life states. It's "underground" enough that PBS helpfully hid the identities of all their heroines, avoiding head shots and using aliases. Transparency took a beating for these headless leftists, but the elitist media love the way it makes America look like a dangerously backward place. Varney noted six out of ten abortions are now achieved with pills, which is why Varney is touting these brave pill-pushers. She started by attending a training session for doulas: "Their teacher, who goes by Ashaba (ph) to protect her identity, is part of an underground network. She helps people in states where abortion is illegal get access to abortion medication…. Ashaba says this word-of-mouth network stretches south from Illinois to Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana." So she's the Harriet Tubman of infanticide. Why does she take on this risk? Ashaba says: "Because I have daughters, because I have friends, because I have loved ones that I want to see safe, and I know I cannot wait on a system that does not and has not cared for us."  This quote also aired in the show's introduction. Who is not safe in this equation? Unborn babies. They are killed.  PBS LOVES ABORTION. The intro on Wednesday touted an underground network for abortion pills: "Because I have daughters, because I have friends, because I have loved ones that I want to see safe. And I know I cannot wait on a system that does not and has not cared for us." pic.twitter.com/PYSUEN0lG0 — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) November 20, 2025 Varney doubled down on the "safety" note: "Ashaba shows us around her Louisiana home that will soon become a safe place where women can self-manage an abortion." More perverse lingo came when another pill pusher read from her text messages. One desperate woman texted: "I'm needing help with an unplanned pregnancy because I'm financially and emotionally unable to give them what they deserve. Please consider this is the first time I have ever asked for help with a situation of this caliber." Listen to that! "I can't give them a life they deserve," so what they deserve is....death?  The story was not entirely unanimous. Out of almost ten minutes, about a minute was granted to dissent. Varney allowed “Anti-abortion activists argue that women can't safely manage an abortion at home without a doctor.” The pro-lifer wasn't hiding his name or his face: JOHN SEAGO, President, Texas Right to Life: We couldn't have anticipated kind of the volume of orders, over 19,000 orders of abortion pills coming from Texas….this is getting pills in two little bags without medical instructions, without any oversight from a medical professional, without any accountability for follow-up care, or making sure that the drugs didn't have any adverse reactions to the patient. It is too dangerous for women and their children for us to just kind of accept as the new norm.   But Varney's heart was pounding for these brave pill-pushers, comparing them to the "Jane Collective" who offered illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade. Activist Elisa Wells compared this to slaves that were given liberating abortions: WELLS: I think it goes way back, even before the Janes to the whole history of midwifery and how women have taken care of each other and how women who were enslaved helped each other, using the Cotton Route itself, ironically, to help each other not be pregnant, often with the offspring of their oppressors. You know it's a pro-abortion piece when the word "baby" is never used in ten minutes. (Seago referred to "mother and child" once.) Instead they routinely dehumanized the baby: It's "ending a pregnancy," not a life.  Even the so-called medical information from the National Library of Medicine under the PBS YouTube video does this: "An induced abortion is a procedure to end a pregnancy." PBS PS: Varney has set out to dismantle the "patriarchy" in general, according to her alumni website for Phillips Exeter Academy: Varney created Fountain Productions, a nonprofit dedicated to independent journalism on the consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973. “There’s been a lot of great journalism about the seismic shift in reproductive rights in American life in print and radio, but [no] consistent place to do this on television,” she says. She and her small team produce News Hour segments and are creating two podcasts, Caged: The Origins of Patriarchy and Body and State, based on News Hour interviews.

On Friday's The 11th Hour on MS NOW, contributor Jason Johnson seemed visibly happy when he recounted that immigration enforcement agents in Charlotte, North Carolina, have had their tires slashed and were chased out of buildings by anti-ICE activists. Additionally, during a discussion of the possibility that former President Bill Clinton might be hurt by release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Johnson laughably claimed that Democrats have never had a problem with convicting fellow Democrats even though every Senate Democrat voted against convicting President Clinton in 1999. Near the end of the show as each panel member gave a pick for "MVP of the Week," he chose the liberal students in Charlotte who walked out of their classes to protest the push by DHS to arrest illegal immigrants in the area. He recalled: So Charlotte's Web is basically ICE Department of Homeland Security's plan to arrest thousands of supposedly undocumented people in Charlotte. It has terrorized the city -- it has shut down traffic. You have schools where 30, 40 percent of the kids are not showing up. And these young people, on their own -- without politicians, without mom, without mom and dad -- said, "We're standing against this -- we want our country to be better." And thousands of them walked out of their schools in protest to say, "We don't want ICE here." Then, even though he claimed that he does not recommend the harassment of federal agents, Johnson couldn't help smiling as he informed viewers of agents being targeted by anti-ICE activists: In addition to the fact -- and I won't say I'm suggesting this behavior -- but ICE agents have found that their tires are slashed. [It sounds like one of the male panel members laughs in the background.] They have found that they have been chased ... Yes, they have been chased out of buildings -- chased out of restaurants. After Ruhle injected, "But that's dangerous behavior," Johnson added: "It is dangerous behavior, but it is a demonstration that the American public, when they're not being listened to, these are the options that they'll take. I hope this administration listens and pulls back these ICE raids." Then, even though a Border Patrol agent was recently injured in Charlotte during a deliberate van attack, Ruhle only expressed concern for anti-ICE protesters: "And I hope nothing violent happens -- happens to any of these students." Earlier in the show, there was also a noteworthy conversation about whether Democrats are concerned about implicating former President Bill Clinton in their push to release the Epstein files, leading Johnson to demonstrate amnesia over Democrats defending their own Presidents accused of sexual misconduct. The liberal MSNBC contributor asserted: Epstein has never been about Democrats because Democrats have never had a problem, like you said, with convicting their own people. This is an internal circular firing squad amongst MAGA. It is -- it is MAGA people who are upset -- it's MAGA people who are concerned. Because if you're a Democrat, you haven't voted for Trump in any of the last 16 years worth of elections. It was not mentioned that Democrats do, in fact, have an established record of defending Democrat Presidents over such issues. Not only was President Clinton defended over a variety of accusations in the 1990s, but sexual assault against President Joe Biden were also ignored in 2020. Since Clinton has not been President in decades, it is no longer in the interests of Democrats to shield him if they can undermine a Republican who still is President. Transcripts follow: MS NOW's The 11th Hour November 21, 2025 11:19 p.m. Eastern JASON JOHNSON, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: ... they desperately need to change the story to being about Democrats. Like if you remember, this whole thing -- the whole, "We're going to release the Epstein files," by Trump when he was running for President was because everybody assumed that it was going to be Bill Clinton who got exposed, right? That's what this -- that's what the MAGA -- that's what the QAnon Pizzagate people believe. RUHLE: But Democrats are willing to say, "Let Bill Clinton get exposed -- let anybody get exposed -- it's about the victim." JOHNSON: But, see, that's the thing. Epstein has never been about Democrats because Democrats have never had a problem, like you said, with convicting their own people. This is an internal circular firing squad amongst MAGA. It is -- it is MAGA people who are upset -- it's MAGA people who are concerned. Because if you're a Democrat, you haven't voted for Trump in any of the last 16 years worth of elections. It is baked into the cake that you think he is a sexual abuser -- whether it's, whether it's grabbing women by their body parts, whether it's doing things to his first wife, whether it's going into dressing rooms. I mean, you already think that's who Donald Trump is. This is about people who are true believers who are disappointed. And they are desperate to turn it into a Democrat problem rather than Ghislaine Maxwell or anybody else. (...) 11:52 p.m. Eastern JASON JOHNSON, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: My "MVP of the Week" is all of the students who walked out in Charlotte this week in protest of ICE raids. STEPHANIE RUHLE: Remind us because we didn't talk about it. JOHNSON: So Charlotte's Web is basically ICE Department of Homeland Security's plan to arrest thousands of supposedly undocumented people in Charlotte. It has terrorized the city -- it has shut down traffic. You have schools where 30, 40 percent of the kids are not showing up. And these young people, on their own -- without politicians, without mom, without mom and dad -- said, "We're standing against this -- we want our country to be better." And thousands of them walked out of their schools in protest to say, "We don't want ICE here." In addition to the fact -- and I won't say I'm suggesting this behavior -- but ICE agents have found that their tires are slashed. (It sounds like one of the male panel members laughs in the background.) They have found that they have been chased --  RUHLE: Stop it. JOHNSON: Yes, they have been chased out of buildings -- chased out of restaurants. RUHLE: But that's dangerous behavior. JOHNSON: It is dangerous behavior, but it is a demonstration that the American public, when they're not being listened to, these are the options that they'll take. I hope this administration listens and pulls back these ICE raids. RUHLE: And I hope nothing violent happens -- happens to any of these students.

CNN correspondents on Friday’s The Situation Room came to a strange head when the topic of the mid-1940s Nuremberg Trials was brought up in light of the recent controversy concerning “unlawful orders.” On Tuesday, a handful of Democratic Congressmen posted a video telling U.S. military and intelligence members to defy illegal commands, to which Trump retorted with a reminder of the punishment for sedition: death. After reporting White House reactions to the back-and-forth, CNN White House reporter Alayna Treene mentioned a point some on the right have made regarding those Democrats’ video: “The fact that the lawmakers who shared this video or were part of this video did not give any examples of any illegal orders that perhaps the military had received or would receive.” Perhaps they feared a legal battle if they accused Trump of issuing or U.S. military members of following specific “unlawful orders.” Or, more likely, they knew they’re full of it. Treene then finished by reminding of audience of the Nuremberg Trials. You know, that somehow totally comparable event that occurred 80 years ago: But I do want to be clear, we know that the law states that service members should not be obeying illegal orders and to do so would actually open them up to prosecution. I'd remind you of the Nuremberg Trials. And so this is gonna be very messy.     Rounding up illegal immigrants with lawful deportation orders was not a war crime. Prosecuting violent aliens who damaged Americans’ quality of life was completely legal. Where did Treene get the idea that she should share this? Situation Room co-host Wolf Blitzer added on to Treene’s ridiculous comparison with a faulty history lesson: … I was just going to say at Nuremberg, the Nazi generals and other senior military officers simply said they were obeying orders from the top. But those orders were illegal, and as a result, they paid the price for those illegal orders. Well, no, actually. Technically, the orders carried out by Nazi militarists were legal under German law at the time. The Third Reich’s living perpetrators, who carried out genocides and conquests, were prosecuted by an International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg because their actions were sheer evil. Blitzer gave a veiled defense of the Democrats’ joint statement with the appearance of an explanation: “The Democrats were not saying, you know, to go ahead and disobey legal orders. They were saying disobey illegal orders or something that goes against the Constitution.” Yes. And grass is green and the sky is blue. What else is new? The video clearly wasn’t a pure and innocent PSA. Those Democrats intended to stir mutinous thoughts amongst U.S. service members because they didn’t like how the Trump administration had utilized the military as of late. The transcript is below. Click "expand" read: CNN’s The Situation Room November 21, 2025 10:04:10 a.m. EST WOLF BLITZER: Looking forward to that interview. I want to go live right now to CNN's Alayna Treene, she's over at the White House, and CNN's Arlette Saenz, she's up on Capitol Hill. Alayna, let me go to you first. What is the Trump administration saying right now about this? ALAYNA TREENE: Well, there's a few points to make, Wolf and Pamela. One is that they — a lot of them were outraged by that video that you just played of these Democratic lawmakers, six of them, all of whom either served in the military or in the U.S. intelligence community. They essentially were arguing that they were trying to encourage troops to rebel against the commander-in-chief. However, once the President started posting, particularly that post about claiming that they were engaging in seditious behavior and that that's punishable by death, that's when a lot of Republicans started agreeing with Democrats that this went too far. Now, the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, addressed this yesterday and she also denied that the post meant that the President was essentially calling on lawmakers to be executed. [Cuts to clip] NANCY CORDES [on 11/20/25]: Just to be clear, does the President want to execute members of Congress? PRESS SEC. KAROLINE LEAVITT [on 11/20/25]: No. [Transition] You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired to together to orchestrate a video messaged to members of the United States military, to active duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the President's lawful orders. [Cuts back to live] TREENE: There's a few things as well, Wolf and Pamela, that I've been hearing in some of my conversations with people in that building behind me. The fact that the lawmakers who shared this video or were part of this video did not give any examples of any illegal orders that perhaps the military had received or would receive. I also want to point you to what we heard from the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche. He said that the Justice Department was going to be opening a formal investigation to look into all of this. But I do want to be clear, we know that the law states that service members should not be obeying illegal orders and to do so would actually open them up to prosecution. I'd remind you of the Nuremberg Trials. And so this is gonna be very messy. There's a chance we will hear from the President today addressing this. A lot of people very eager to know what exactly he meant with these posts. BROWN: All right. So, let's bring in — oh, go ahead, Wolf. BLITZER: No, I was just going to say at Nuremberg, the Nazi generals and other senior military officers simply said they were obeying orders from the top. But those orders were illegal, and as a result, they paid the price for those illegal orders. The Democrats were not saying, you know, to go ahead and disobey legal orders. They were saying disobey illegal orders or something that goes against the Constitution.

Former White House press secretary and current MS NOW host Jen Psaki joined former NBC and CBS anchor Katie Couric on her Substack’s video show on Wednesday to claim that the current White House press corps is becoming “Kremlin-esque.” Both Psaki and Couric were too deep in their echo chamber to realize that Psaki’s previous sentence unwittingly highlighted just how absurd the claim was. Psaki lamented, “And what they've done is they have really, and I read the press briefing a lot because we do a little thing on our show about it sometimes, more and more of the questions in there are by sycophants, or by people who are not asking about news that the American people cares about, but they're asking about, I mean, literally a question has started more than once, why is Trump in such good shape, right?”     Yeah, having conservative reporters ask about President Trump’s fitness is too much. What the White House needs are reporters from traditional outlets to ask if the U.S. will hold free and fair elections, trash conservatives, or declare that “voting rights” have “collapsed.” Psaki’s double standards notwithstanding, she continued, “Or they are, you know, putting out conspiracy theories. There are people who, and they are getting a lot of the questions. There are some of the people who are in the press pools. This means that reporters who are there to cover MBS being at the White House or to cover Zelensky being at the White House or to ask these questions that Mary Bruce fortunately asked yesterday, there are fewer of them. And that is, you don't know that and see that unless you've lived there, but that's a huge, huge problem because it's becoming more of a Kremlin-esque press corps.” The fact that Bruce was there and allowed to ask those questions without worrying that she would soon be falling out of her window disproves any notion that the White House is creating a Kremlin-like atmosphere. Still, Couric wanted to act as if softball questions were the problem, “Right. And they've invited a lot of reporters from very right-wing media outlets, and you're right, they usually say, I forget there was one example, like, ‘Did you ever believe that you would be the peacemaker?’ I mean, just, so, and is it, I believe Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend.” Psaki and Couric’s big complaint is that conservative reporters exist and are allowed to ask conservative-leaning questions, so they cherry-pick certain ones to obscure the fact that conservative reporters can and do ask good questions and that they speak for a segment of the population that MS NOW and its like-minded fellow outlets do not. Here is a transcript for the November 19 show: Katie Couric Media 11/19/2025 JEN PSAKI: And what they've done is they have really, and I read the press briefing a lot because we do a little thing on our show about it sometimes, more and more of the questions in there are by sycophants, or by people who are not asking about news that the American people cares about, but they're asking about, I mean, literally a question has started more than once, why is Trump in such good shape, right? Or they are, you know, putting out conspiracy theories. There are people who, and they are getting a lot of the questions. There are some of the people who are in the press pools. This means that reporters who are there to cover MBS being at the White House or to cover Zelensky being at the White House or to ask these questions that Mary Bruce fortunately asked yesterday, there are fewer of them. And that is, you don't know that and see that unless you've lived there, but that's a huge, huge problem because it's becoming more of a Kremlin-esque press corps. KATIE COURIC: Right. And they've invited a lot of reporters from very right-wing media outlets— PSAKI: Yeah. COURIC: —and you're right, they usually say, I forget there was one example, like, “Did you ever believe that you would be the peacemaker?” I mean, just, so, and is it, I believe Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. PSAKI: Yes.