President Biden's farewell address lasted 17 minutes and included some sour grapes about “an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Here’s part of what Biden said: President Biden: Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power. But taxpayer-funded PBS didn’t see any hyperbole in its special coverage of Biden’s speech, only fair warnings about the incoming Trump administration. PBS was worse than ABC, CBS, or NBC in the speech aftermath. The network’s most biased reporter, Laura Barron-Lopez, seemed to agree with Biden on how the current president has been a victim of “lies and disinformation.” Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: So Laura, one of the things we heard him say, he warned of a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few wealthy people. He warned of an oligarchy taking shape in this country. What other themes and remarks stood out to you? Laura Barron-Lopez: ....Very clear warnings that he's making at what he still sees as a threat posed by the incoming president Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has forecasted about what he would do to exert his control and try to expand presidential powers. Congressional reporter Lisa Desjardins chimed in with fulsome praise for Bidenomics and mockery of Trump. Lisa Desjardins: ….He could have talked a lot more at length about his own accomplishments -- for example, we just got an incredible jobs report, his jobs record is something that I think economists will be talking about for years. That’s not where his mind is. His mind is you all are reporting is instead on the oligarch taking power which he says threatening freedoms and the phrase he repeated again and again, a fair shot for people. It was also interesting to me, someone who was privileged enough to cover both his campaign and now President Trump's campaign, we talk a lot about President Trump in terms of the 1980s being formational for him, but I think he goes back to an even older time, the 1880s really with all his imperialism and populism. And we heard the phrase robber barons that President Biden is talking about. He's saying that there are dangers that have been in this country before oligarchs that we are now returning to and he wants people to pay attention. Bennett did bring up how America has a lower opinion of Biden than the partisans at PBS seem to have. Bennett: A majority of Americans, poll after poll have shown this, give President Biden low favorability ratings. They disapprove of how he has conducted himself in office. How does the White House reconcile that disconnect, that gap between what the White House views as their achievements and that perception among a majority of Americans? Barron-Lopez made excuses for Biden: It was all conservative disinformation and lies! In other words, the left’s power to censor is slipping away, with decisions by Meta and X enabling conservatives to speak more freely online. Barron-Lopez: ….we heard some of the president's response to that tonight, when he specifically talked about social media giving up on fact-checking and he talked about the level of disinformation and the tech-industrial, across the tech-industrial complex, which is what he called it….they ultimately have blamed some of that on this new information environment that the country is in, on lies spread across, easily across social media, and the responsibility that this president believes the people in charge of those social media companies believe have in trying to make sure that facts are what reach the public and not lies and disinformation…. Desjardins made a striking observation that shouldn’t get lost when talking about Biden’s legacy. Desjardins: I have been texting with a lot of Democrats, elected lawmakers at the Capitol, I can't find one yet who was watching the speech…. A partial transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Special Coverage 1/15/25 8:19:21 p.m. (ET) Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: So Laura, one of the things we heard him say, he warned of a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few wealthy people. He warned of an oligarchy taking shape in this country. What other themes and remarks stood out to you? Laura Barron-Lopez: ....He said that it may take time for the American public to fully feel the effect of the things that he accomplished in his one term. But the majority of this speech was about bigger themes, about what he still sees as a threat to democracy, and questions of separation of power, of checks and balance. The fact that he said that no president is immune from crimes committed while in office and that a president's power is not absolute. Very clear warnings that he's making at what he still sees as a threat posed by the incoming president Donald Trump and what Donald Trump has forecasted about what he would do to exert his control and try to expand presidential powers. Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: ....What did you take away from some of his warnings about, as Laura was mentioning, respecting democratic institutions? Lisa Desjardins: Well, this is a man who’s had a truly remarkable, in our history, political career. I covered just a small part of that career, 20 years, so that’s how long he's been in office. He ran for office 13 different times as a politician. So he’s taking a long view here. He knows that this is yet another pivot point….this was a more sort of a more tangible speech about what he sees are the direct and specific problems right now. He could have talked a lot more at length about his own accomplishments -- for example, we just got an incredible jobs report, his jobs record is something that I think economists will be talking about for years. That’s not where his mind is. His mind is you all are reporting is instead on the oligarch taking power and threatening freedoms and the phrase he repeated again and again a fair shot for people. It was also interesting to me someone who was privileged enough to cover his campaign and now President Trump's campaign. We talk a lot about President Trump of the 1980s being formational for him, but I think he goes back to an even older time, the 1880s with all his imperialism and populism. And we heard the phrase robber barons that President Biden is talking about. He's saying that there are dangers that have been in this country before oligarchs that we are now returning to and he wants people to pay attention. Bennett: And Laura Barron-Lopez, a majority of Americans, poll after poll have shown this, give President Biden low favorability ratings. They disapprove of how he has conducted himself in office. How does the White House reconcile that disconnect that gap between what the White House views as their achievements and that perception among a majority of Americans? Barron-Lopez: Well I think Geoff, that we heard some of the president's response to that tonight, when he specifically talked about social media giving up on fact-checking and he talked about the level of disinformation and the tech-industrial, across the tech-industrial complex, which is what he called it. That is something that this White House, that Democrats, that aides inside the White House, have vented a lot about throughout the presidency, that essentially despite the fact that as though he did a lot to bring the country back from the COVID-19 pandemic, despite statistics and data showing that the economy is rebounding, that they feel as though he hasn’t gotten credit for that or the job creation as a result of the infrastructure bill and new climate change actions that he’s implemented. And so they ultimately have blamed some of that on this new information environment that the country is in, on lies spread across, easily across social media, and the responsibility that this president believes the people in charge of those social media companies believe have in trying to make sure that facts are what reach the public and not lies and disinformation. Also, a lot of White House aides have often said what the president said tonight which is that again they think that ultimately, Americans will look back on President Biden’s time in office very differently than they view it right now in the current moment. And potentially very similar to the way Americans viewed some of President Obama's actions such as the Affordable Care Act. They believe that ultimately the public will credit him for some of the actions that he took and that it will take time as the president said tonight, and that's how they reconcile it, Geoff. But ultimately, right now, leaving office, you're right. His polling numbers do not look very good and we have a poll, a recent poll, out today from PBS News, Maris, and NPR and in it, it shows that the president’s disapproval rating is at 50% and his approval rating is at 42% currently, Geoff." Nawaz: Lisa, while we know he’s been leading the nation for four years, he’s also been leading his party. What do your Democratic sources tell you about this moment? Desjardins: I have been texting with a lot of Democrats, elected lawmakers at the Capitol, I can't find one yet who was watching the speech. And in fact as we talk now, as he talked about the future of the country, what are Democrats doing? A number of them are at Democratic National Committee headquarters for a forum for the candidates who wants to lead the party. So, Biden is talking about his legacy but the party is moving on to someone else.

On Wednesday's Morning Joe, in the course of condemning Pete Hegseth's nomination as Secretary of Defense, Joe Scarborough got up on his high horse and fumed that it is a "lie" and an "insult" to claim that the US military has gone woke. The facts refute Scarborough's faux outrage. There's overwhelming evidence of the military's wokeness, and this report by Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Chip Roy, entitled "Woke Warfighters," does an excellent job of documenting it. Scarborough brought in retired general and MSNBC analyst Barry McCaffrey, who offered fawning praise of Scarborough's "terrific statement." McCaffrey even defended Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal, claiming that rather than being a "disgrace," it was actually a "miracle operation" because we were able to evacuate many civilians. Here are just some of the many examples, drawn from the Rubio/Roy report, demonstrating how the military, under the Obama and Biden administrations, has gone woke--and how Scarborough is so outrageously wrong in his denial of that truth. Bishop Garrison was the man in charge of the the Biden administration’s “Countering Extremist Activity Working Group.” Garrison is a rabid partisan who routinely denigrated conservatives and has stated that “systemic racism is one of our greatest national security challenges.” Garrison has also promoted the deeply unhistorical “1619 Project,” which argues that the beginning of slavery in Britain’s American colonies, not the Declaration of Independence, is the real founding of America, and that everything wrong with society today can be traced back to slavery. The Department of Defense Education Agency (DODEA) exists to operate K-12 schools around the world and in the United States. The DoD chose Kelsea Wing, a radical extremist, as Chief DEI Officer at DODEA. Wing has tweeted: “I'm exhausted with these white folx [a woke term] in these [professional development] sessions. [T]his lady actually had the CAUdacity to say that black people can be racist too…. I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS.” (Caudacity is a derogatory word to describe the audacity of white people.) Wing also wrote a book to teach white children that they have white privilege and that “white privilege hurts a lot of people.” The Biden Administration wanted to indoctrinate a new generation of military leadership at the U.S. Service Academies with Critical Race Theory (CRT). An admiral told midshipmen at the Naval Academy that they needed to read "How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi – a book that teaches that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination,” that capitalism is racist, and that people by virtue of their race are inherently oppressive or privileged while others are inherently victimized or oppressed. A professor at the Air Force Academy boasted about her desire to make students learn how to “identify the structural racism and inequality that has been endemic in American society.” It is important, this professor argued, for students to understand that “racism was ingrained in the system from the beginning” to understand why racism persists today. Cadets at West Point are being taught that “in order to understand racial inequality and slavery, it is first necessary to address whiteness.” A slide for a class at West Point obtained by Freedom of Information requests argues that “white people and people of color live racially different structured lives.” The slide goes on to list three characteristics of Whiteness, describing it as “a location of structural advantage [and] race privilege,” “a standpoint or place from which white people look at themselves and the rest of society,” and “a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed.” The Biden Administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy is supposed to outline America’s strategic interests, the threats we face, and how to counter them. In discussing how to “strengthen the effectiveness of the force,” the first topic listed by the Biden Administration is“promoting diversity and inclusion.”  The United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is responsible for the elite, special operations missions executed all around the world. Yet even this hallowed institution has not been spared the undue influence of DEI. In the first lines of SOCOM’s 2021 Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, Chief Master Sergeant Smith and General Clarke write that “diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives.” The plan goes on to say that “leaders must integrate diversity and inclusion efforts into unit goals, mission objectives, talent management initiatives, and operational priorities for a successful implementation.” The plan makes “diversity in [Special Operations Forces] an operational imperative.” Our military has – or at least, historically has had – rigorous and robust medical requirements and restrictions on who can and cannot serve.  Among disqualifying conditions are: peanuts or gluten allergies; learning disorders like ADD or ADHD that require medication; a history of depression or anxiety that required medication, treatment, or hospitalization; and skin diseases like eczema and psoriasis. People cannot even enlist with Invisalign or braces until they are removed. And yet, today’s woke military is now proudly promoting and celebrating sex reassignment procedures, which can have months-long recovery periods, with complete recovery taking “up to one year” for some procedures. Less than a week into his presidency, President Biden reversed Secretary Mattis’s policy, thereby preventing any service member from being forced out due to his or her gender dysphoria. On “International Transgender Day of Visibility,” the DoD prohibited “discrimination on the basis of gender identity or an individual’s identification as transgender” and established “a means to access into the military in one’s self-identifying gender.” This instruction allows members of each service to “transition” while on active duty, including “gender reassignment surgery.” Once a person completes the gender transition, his or her marker in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) will be changed to the gender of his or her choosing. This will allow the person to use bathroom andshower facilities of his or her choosing. Services are now requiring their members to receive training on the transgender service policy, including advice on how to use pronouns properly and when to recommend their subordinates consider gender reassignment surgery.  The Marines also tweeted a Pride Month image with rainbow-tipped bullets on a Marine helmet, featuring the words “proud to serve.” The Air Force updated its writing guide to allow airmen and guardians to include pronouns in their signature block. An Air Force Academy slide presentation titled, “Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do,” advises cadets to use gender-neutral language and avoid terms such as “mom” and “dad. Here's the transcript. MSNBC Morning Joe  1/15/25 6:15 am ET JOE SCARBOROUGH: And it's just an insult, just an absolute. And again, there's so much to talk about here. But we've just got to go full stop, because I'm sick and tired of people tearing down the men and women in uniform that are protecting us. And I'm sick and tired.  You know, people want to lie about the economy. They can lie about the economy. I don't take that as personally. I mean, because that's their own problem, because they're going to be judged by how they do compared to the United States economy right now, which is the envy of the world. We have record low jobless rates. The stock market's at record highs. I mean, they'll have to deal with that.  But this insult, that somehow our military is weak and woke is just an outrageous lie. And it's an insult to our men and women in uniform.  I want to bring in right now General Barry McAffrey. You talk about American heroes. He's got a little dust on his boots through the years. And sir, we thank you. We thank you for your service to this country. Thank you also for getting up very early this morning on the West Coast.  I just, I want you to give me your general feelings about what you saw yesterday. But first, let's blow apart this lie that our military is weak and woke, and not the strongest in the world by far, first. Could we do that, sir?  BARRY McCAFFREY: Boy, that was such a terrific opening statement on your part.  And by the way, everybody goes back to Afghanistan, the disgrace of the withdrawal. Mr. Trump ran for presidency and said he was going to get us out of Afghanistan. And he handed Biden, who ran for office to get out of Afghanistan, a situation with 2,500 troops on the ground.  We pulled out over 100,000 screaming civilians in a miracle operation, that could have been the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, because we put seven elite battalions on the ground and intimidated the Taliban. 

In a special second hour of his show Wednesday night, NewsNation host Chris Cuomo divulged to viewers that the growing, independent network had been dropped by the predominant cable and internet provider in the greater New York City area, Altice (formerly known as Cablevision), and called it a “suspicious” “situation” and episode in a trend of “censorship.” Cuomo first indirectly alluded to this during a segment with Alan Dershowitz about TikTok’s possible shuttering in the United States (as its Chinese Communist Party-linked parent company ByteDance has refused to sell it). He said he’s broadly “worried about censorship” and he’s “seeing it more and more.”     “[T]here’s a situation right now, okay, that is really suspicious to me. Alright, We, right now NewsNation is in a battle to stay on a cable system that is French-owned, okay? And I have no idea what good reason they would have for coming after NewsNation, which they did on their own accord, unprovoked, except one, there’s something about what NewsNation does,” he added. Cuomo wondered if they might “have a political disposition that they feel we’re balancing” in its sadly novel concept of respecting the views of all Americans. He then speculated about ratings: [F]or whatever reason, right now, they’re saying that NewsNation, nobody cares about it, we’re not going to run it and it reeks of having some type of bias and this type of ability to control what the American people can have access to is really worrying to me. I don’t speak for NewsNation. I don’t speak for the bosses. I’m speaking for Chris Cuomo, and I’m saying professor. It is very suspicious to me, why NewsNation, all the other outlets? Why don’t you want us? I think it’s happening more and more. As a cable provider, Altice has almost certainly struggled to maintain subscribers as more and more Americans cut the cord. That said, their moves have been rake-steppers by axing NewsNation, the New York City TV market’s CW affiliate, PIX-11, and MSG Networks, the homes of the New York Islanders, Knicks, Liberty, Rangers, and the Buffalo Sabers and New Jersey Devils. Later going to break, Cuomo invited viewers to search out information about what he was alluding to, adding:     I want to preserve my sus — my — my disbelief, okay? I want to wait and see because I’m telling you, I think more and more moneyed interests are playing with what you get to see and that’s what NewsNation was created to counter, okay? That’s all I’ll say right now. A caller named Charlie at the end of the show shared he was “a fellow cable executive” in Atlanta, Georgia and said Cuomo has “to tell all your viewers, you need to burn up the phones and tell them, this is a great show, this is a great network to have on” as support for NewsNation executives in the negotiating process. The caller disagreed with the notion of censorship, so Cuomo countered with a simple question: “But why go after NewsNation?”     Charlie later doubled down on his advice as well as giving a strong testimony of support to the network’s mission (click “expand”): CHARLIE IN ATLANTA: Chris, what I can tell you is this, I stopped watching cable news years ago, and I found you, and I found NewsNation, and I was a Wall Street-only guy, and I got to tell you, Wall Street reader, and you have brought me back to the network. You brought me back to watching cable news again, so they need to wake up, and people need to really get active about this. You’re a great voice. I appreciate what you do, and it’s fantastic to see you take a stand on this, and I really support it and people need to burn up the phones. It matters to them when you tie up their phones, when you’re calling them and saying, “keep this network on and do it.” So I’m going to reiterate your call. I love what you’re saying, and it’s really important.  CUOMO: Well — CHARLIE IN ATLANTA: You know, here’s a guy who has Bill O’Reilly on with Stephen A. Smith. CUOMO: — right? CHARLIE IN ATLANTA: Stephen A. Smith, I don’t watch in sports because he’s the mad guy. But you know what? Tonight, your deal with — with Bill O’Reilly and Stephen A Smith? Brilliant. Before kicking to Banfield, Cuomo concurred and said everyone must do more “to bring people together” and “have the conversation because, when we stay apart, it — it’s all animus, all the time.” Back on January 24, 2023, DirecTV dropped our friends at Newsmax and, thanks to months of loud, public pressure, DirecTV reached a new agreement on March 22, 2023. Hopefully Altice comes to its senses and brings back NewsNation as they, along with Fox Business, Fox News Channel, and Newsmax, are the only news networks with widespread cable distribution that don’t hue to the tiresome corporate, leftist worldview. To see the relevant NewsNation transcript from January 15, click here.

The six-person jury for the $1 billion defamation suit against CNN heard closing arguments on Thursday and started their deliberations. Both parties urged the jury to use their “common sense” to see them through deliberations and secure them the legal victory. But it was the argument of Vel Freedman, the lead counsel for Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young, who called on the jury, “Your verdict will stand in history” and to use the opportunity to “Stand up against fake news.” Before the parties made their final pitch to the jury, they needed to be read the jury instructions. Noting that they should be viewing the evidence as an average person, Judge William Henry of the 14 Circuit Court in Bay County, Florida listed the issues the jury had the responsibility to determine: If CNN had published what was being viewed. If said material was "of and concerning" Young. If the materials published were false. If the material was defamatory. If CNN was negligent at the very least. If Young sustained damages from the material With that out of the way, Freedman argued that in the opening statement from CNN’s lead counsel David Axelrod he told them that every word in CNN's report was "true” and now they were able to see for themselves. He called out how every CNN witness used the same false definition for "black market," claiming the definition was an “unregulated market.” He call that evidence of a “conspiracy” at CNN to get them on the same page, pointing to the fact that CNN did not produce dictionaries with that definition (a CNN employee also testified that they did not have a preferred dictionary).     Further he pointed out that no witness from CNN testified that they were sorry; worse yet, each one testified that they didn’t like the apology CNN aired and seemed resentful of their legal department. In fact, CNN’s VP for newsgathering Adam Levine testified that the apology was only issued as an attempt to head off the lawsuit. That comment prompted a juror question that called it a “disingenuous apology.” Freedman told the jury that, "Your verdict will stand in history” and called on them to “Stand up against fake news.” “Make the phone ring in Georgia. Send a message [to CNN]," he concluded. For his argument, Axelrod made “use your common sense” his catchphrase for the duration but there wasn’t much of it in his argument. He argued that Young could have called on any of his former contacts to testify that they don’t want to associate with him because of the CNN report. But why would they help him if they don’t want to associate with him? Axelrod argued that they could have subpoenaed them. Freedman countered with the fact CNN didn’t subpoena them either. It was the same back and forth argument for why each didn’t bring in Young’s psychologist from Austria. That was part of Axelrod’s dismissal of Young's mental health woes and claim that Young was "malingering." Freedman countered by noting that CNN didn’t product their own mental health expert, only their lawyer. Probably the most telling part of the closing argument that may have betrayed a concern for the ruling, Axelrod apologized to the jury for being annoying or rubbing them the wrong way, and asked them not to "take it out" on CNN. As off the positing of this piece, the jury is almost 4 hours into deliberation.

President Joe Biden disturbingly pushed for increased online censorship in his farewell address delivered from the Oval Office on Thursday. During the speech, Biden asserted that he is “concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial comp,” which he claimed could “pose real dangers for our country.” He compared this to the military-industrial complex and doubled down on his administration’s record of pressuring Big Tech to censor speech. The outgoing president even included an oblique jab at Meta for its new pro-free speech policy of “giving up on” its so-called third-party fact-checking program. Read the full blog on MRC Free Speech America’s site.