Friday night’s edition of Amanpour & Co. on PBS made a full-throated call for reparations for slavery in America, with host Christiane Amanpour interviewing Ruti Teitel, law school professor and author of Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice, and Aria Florant, the CEO of Liberation Ventures, which advocates for slavery reparations in America. The ideologically harmonious trio even put the USA on the level of Syria, two nations in need of overdue reckoning over the sins of the past. Amanpour's introduction: AMANPOUR: From Syria to the United States, reckoning with the past, a discussion about transitional justice and reparations. The host underlined the atrocious comparison of the USA and the failed terror state of Syria, calling reparations “transitional justice”: “It's something that links Syria to the United States, to South Africa, and many countries in between, with dark pasts which have to be reckoned with. In America, some argue that reparations are the best way to repair the devastating harm inflicted by slavery and racial discrimination. But it's a proposal that's faced so much opposition....” Amanpour demanded an American reckoning of its past slavery (as if over half a million dead in the Civil War wasn’t enough): “And now, we're well into the 21st century, Aria, and there appears to be a complete backlash against even, you know, even now. I mean, all these decades, centuries since the Civil War, it's happening again. So, what is it about the culture in the United States that has not been conditioned or whatever? It hasn't been accepted yet. Why has there been no Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for instance, at the very least?” Amanpour and her guests placed former President Barack Obama, “the first black president in the United States,” upon a moral pedestal and lectured critics of his presidential “apology tour” of nations supposedly hurt by “America's historical wrongdoings.” TEITEL: ....I don't call them apologies -- AMANPOUR: No, you don't, but the political right did. TEITEL: Yes. No, no. I understand. It's a thin line. And I think Obama walked that thin line very well because he knew how much he needed to do to reset foreign relations. If you think about bearing the Cold War, as he said, a reset in Latin America. He talked about the importance of respectful dialogue in both the Americas and in Asia. He went to Vietnam. You know, he went to places that were, you know, just sites, burial sites. Laos, the most bombed city in the world. Went to Hiroshima as a standing president and stood side by side with the leaders there. And he said, you know, we need to acknowledge the past and we need to move forward. He never said we shouldn't have, you know, he didn't fully say an apology for Hiroshima.... Amanpour, whose political positions are unilaterally Euro-left, had clearly pre-chosen a side in this ideological debate and seemingly had to catch herself from going even further in her advocacy. AMANPOUR: ….a very disappointing Pew [poll], or maybe it's not disappointing, maybe it's a normal, you know, percentage: 2021 Research Center poll says 68 percent of Americans say the descendants of enslaved people in the United States should not be repaid. So, that's one thing. My other question on that is, isn't storytelling one of the most important ways of getting, you know, culture to change? Has enough storytelling been done? It's not as if PBS hasn’t worked the evils of slavery into its programming, including Ken Burns’ latest epic documentary on the American Revolution.

NPR’s political analysts love to tell their leftist listeners that the Republican Party is in horrible shape, roiled by internal disputes, and they’ll locate the appropriate Experts to underline it. When the Democrats are evaluated, it’s a cozy inside job. On Thursday's All Things Considered, Mara Liasson only considered speaking to party regulars, no outside experts. She channeled hope in a segment titled "What 2026 might look like for Democrats." Liasson began:  “For a party out of power in Washington, D.C., Democrats are on a roll outside the Beltway. They're winning races, and President Trump's poll numbers are dropping -- always good signs for the opposition party in a midterm election year. But there are still a lot of obstacles ahead for the out party.” She noted Trump’s approval rating was low, but former Harry Reid aide Adam Jentleson acknowledged voters still trust Republicans more on crime, immigration, and the economy. Liasson touted party unity: “This year, all the Democratic candidates were singing from the same page, whether they were democratic socialists, like Zohran Mamdani in New York City, or moderate centrists, like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey.” Fact check! The New York City mayor's race began with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo being the Democrat establishment's choice for mayor, until Anti-Zionist Zohran won the primary, and then Cuomo ran as an independent. (NPR nudged the DNC to get behind Zohran.) Then there's Mikie and Abby: these women are liberals, not moderates. Their American Conservative Union lifetime ratings are single-digits: 6 percent for Sherrill, 8.5 percent for Spanberger. But their resumes in the military or intelligence agencies are routinely used to paint them into the middle. Liasson’s party-unity talk continued: LIASSON: It's unusual for the normally fractious Democrats to agree on much. But this year, in addition to a unified, across-the-board focus on affordability, Democrats also seem to be forming a rare consensus on culture war issues -- immigration, crime, transgender rights. NEERA TANDEN: People get that we're in an existential threat and there just aren't these kinds of litmus tests. LIASSON: Liberal litmus tests like defunding the police or decriminalizing illegal border crossings or the infamous litmus test over transgender rights that came back to haunt Kamala Harris in an attack ad that blanketed airwaves in the weeks before the election. In an effort to gain a liberal group's endorsement, Harris agreed to support taxpayer-funded transgender surgery for prison inmates. Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff, congressman and mayor of Chicago, says Democrats have learned a lesson. RAHM EMANUEL: Don't focus on the bathroom access or locker rooms. Focus on classroom excellence. I happen to think defunding the police was dumb, but I have a proactive public safety argument, not a legal brief that you're 22% safer this year than last year. Does anyone believe NPR when it’s implied that the Democrats are unified in backing away from the transgender lobby’s demands? The liberal media may try to avoid the bathroom and locker-room access, unless they can lament a Republican “rollback” in “transgender rights.” Last year, NPR's senior political editor Domenico Montanaro posted a petulant "fact check" claiming Trump couldn't claim Harris or Walz were radical on gender issues. Liasson did end on a sour note, that news won’t get better for Democrats as the 2020s end. “After the 2030 census, more than 15 electoral votes could move south away from the so-called blue wall states Democrats currently rely on to win the White House -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania -- and to red states like Texas, Georgia and Florida.” One could argue Georgia's purplish at this point. But no one can argue that NPR isn't firmly located on the Mamdani Left.  

On Friday morning, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee played politics, releasing 19 photos from the Epstein estate, including several featuring Donald Trump, long before he was President, pictured with various women. Bill Clinton, the former Prince Andrew, Woody Allen, Bill Gates, ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon and billionaire Richard Branson were also featured in the photos selected for release, but as the Democrats probably expected, the media focus was on Trump, and on Friday evening's edition of CNN's The Source, host Kaitlan Collins didn't disappoint them. In two of the photos, the women posing with Trump had their faces redacted, including six in one photo. A third one showing Trump with Belgian model Ingrid Seynhaeve in 1997 had previously been published. There was also a picture of  Trump on what looks like the wrapper of a condom that says, "I'm HUUUUGE." The photos prove absolutely nothing, as even Collins acknowledged early on: "None of the men that you're about to see are accused of wrongdoing. That's important to note, but Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released these pictures from Jeffrey Epstein's estate, citing the need for transparency." That may be their stated reason, but it doesn't force Collins or anyone else to give the photos the same gravitas and coverage, they would deserve had they revealed something, anything at all.   Collins brought on the Ranking Member on the House Committee, California Democrat Robert Garcia, who did not directly answer the key question. COLLINS: One thing that the Republicans on your committee have accused you of, and the White House as well is cherry-picking certain pictures, they say, to form a narrative here. How did you decide which pictures in the 95,000 that you now have access to, how did you decide which ones to release today? GARCIA: I think it's interesting that Republicans like to make these arguments, when they have yet to call on President Trump, in a strong way, to release all the files. They wanted to conceal the files. They wanted to oppose our subpoena. They tried everything they could to stop our vote in the Congress to actually get the files released.  Collins should have interrupted at that point and remind viewers of the fact that the House voted 427-1 to release all Epstein files and President Trump signed that bill on November 19, 2025. Instead he was allowed to continue. GARCIA: Our goal is to get everything that we can release out to the public. And some of what was sent to us in this documentation is also quite disturbing... COLLINS: When you say it's disturbing, can you explain why? GARCIA: What I can say is Jeffrey Epstein was clearly a sick person, a horrible sex trafficker. And so was Ghislaine Maxwell. Like I said earlier, the photos are disturbing... And our hope is to be able to get the information about what is included in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos that have been released by the Epstein estate, some very disturbing of women and their conditions.. COLLINS: Well, I mean, wow. I mean, it sounds like you're saying there's potentially images of women being assaulted or in sexual acts. GARCIA: I think what I would say is that there are very disturbing photos...  Like the released photos, an answer designed to make viewers think the worst, and link it all to the biggest name in the photos, Donald Trump. A point that wasn't lost on CNN commentator Scott Jennings.   JENNINGS: Look, here's what I think. Robert Garcia and the Democrats on Oversight, don't care about justice. They don't care about victims. They don't care about anything except one thing. They care about making the American public think that Donald Trump had something to do with this.... They should be patient. If they cared about victims, and they cared about a narrative of justice, and they cared about that part of it, they would be patient, they would be measured. But what did they do today? They released photos that are cherry- picked, by the way, and they throw in an already publicly-released photo of Donald Trump. They blur out the pictures of the women to make you think that these women were underage sex victims. When, in fact, they were very adult. They were at an event. It's already a publicly released photo. And one of the women said, on the record, oh, Donald Trump was gentlemanly. So, what the Democrats are doing here is they're taking a very serious story, in which real people got hurt, by powerful people, all for the purpose of trying to smear Donald Trump. That's what this has always been about. They didn't care about it until now. And what they're doing with these photos is nothing short of outrageous. This is not a story about Trump and Epstein...This is a story about Epstein. But they want it to be about Trump...and honestly, it is crazy... Crazy indeed, and at this point, a non-story with Donald Trump as its fictional main character. 

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!