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.  

Hmmm. Where oh where did those pesky Republican Presidents go on the cover of TIME magazine? On newsstands now is a possibly oldish TIME special that I just noticed on my local go-to Barnes & Noble newsstand. An edition labeled for display until mid-February of 2026. It is titled as follows:                  Best of PERSON of the YEAR               Leaders Who Made a Better World Dominating the cover is a sparkling Taylor Swift on stage somewhere, with guitar, arms flung wide open, big smile on her face as she apparently is singing one of her hit songs. Just below her are six previous TIME Person/Man of the Year covers from over the decades. They feature: “The Guardians and the War on Truth: The Staff of the Capital Gazette on December 9” - Prominently listing the murder of journalist  President-elect  Jimmy Carter (in January of 1977 for 1976, the year Carter came from political nowhere to win the presidency) Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono as “The Good Samaritans” for 2005 The American Soldier featuring three uniformed soldiers in fighting gear for 2003. Greta Thunberg: The Power of Youth in 2019 President-elect Barack Obama in 2008  (It must be noted that the staff of the Capital Gazette are featured because they were subjects of a murderous assailant who disliked something that appeared in the Gazette. Five staffers were killed, two were wounded.)  Beneath the images of these six TIME covers are photos, although not on TIME covers, of Britain’s young Queen Elizabeth II, Astronaut Frank Borman and his two Apollo 8 colleagues, and last a color photo of President John F. Kennedy standing in front of an American flag as he gives a speech. Open this “Best of Person of the Year” issue and there is immediately something curious to be seen. Of the 48 people listed inside over the decades as “Person of the Year” or “Man of the Year” - there are seven Presidents of the United States. They would be Presidents FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Carter, Obama and Biden. Other than the GOP’s Eisenhower, those selected by TIME are Democrats one and all. Again curiously, while Dwight Eisenhower is included, his picture and a good bit of the bio material accompanying his story focuses not on Ike’s presidency but on his time as the commanding General on D-Day and in World War II. His presidency - he was a Republican - is not in major focus. Amusingly, Russia’s President Mikhail Gorbachev was named Person of the Year in 1987. But, again curiously, in this issue that celebrates Gorbachev there is zero mention - none - that Gorbachev’s accomplishments on the international scene were made possible in the first place because of U.S. President Ronald Reagan seeking him out as a partner in ending the Cold War. Reagan made a point of negotiating in person with Gorbachev three different times, on one occasion inviting him to the White House to sign a nuclear agreement Reagan had negotiated with the Russian. That was a big deal - and as a young Reagan staffer in the day I was lucky enough to witness the Gorbachev arrival at the White House for myself. In fact, Reagan was selected more than once during and after his White House tenure as a TIME Man of the Year. Surely that would be a reason to include him in this TIME round up of “Leaders Who Made a Better World” over the decades. But alas, Reagan is nowhere to be found in this issue. Neither, for that matter are the Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford, George H. W. and George W. Bush. Every one of whom, like their Democrat presidential colleagues, had some contribution to make during their time in office. Indeed, the back cover of this issue features the images of 42 TIME covers from over the years. Among them are covers featuring Democrat Presidents Obama, Carter, Biden, Kennedy, Roosevelt and Truman. The only GOPer present is Eisenhower, and the main focus there is Ike as World War II General, replete with photo of a uniformed Ike in World War II talking to American troops getting ready to go into battle. But appearances by GOP Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan or either of the Bush Presidents? Much less the currently sitting GOP President Trump? All of whom more than arguably easily rank as “Leaders Who Made a Better World” in their time in office? Nothing. Are you kidding? That makes six GOP Presidents completely ignored by TIME in this issue, with recognition of six Democrats from FDR to Biden. Yet it is very safe to say that the group of former GOP Presidents from Nixon to the Bushes have indeed made the world a better place during their individual tenures. Whether launching a roaring economy or winning the Cold War, GOP Presidents have seriously made a better world in their times in office. That’s an awful lot of American history being ignored for what cannot help but be seen as decidedly partisan reasons, a national “news” magazine put together by a staff of “journalists” whose job is supposedly to revolve around the facts. Just the facts. But in reality, as this edition clearly shows, the TIME journos are clearly more involved with boosting Dems and freezing out Republicans. One thing can be said of this collective “Best Person of the Year” issue: TIME loves the Left. And can’t stand Republicans. Suffice to say: “Message received.”

Before CBS Saturday Morning officially headed off into its uncertain future, co-host Michelle Miller used her final episode to interview German author Daniel Kehlmann about his recent novel about G.W. Pabst, the silent film director who originally fled the Nazis only to return and make propaganda movies. Naturally, much of the conversation was about life in a dictatorship, but unnaturally, towards the end of their conversation, Kehlmann would compare the current United States to the East Germany his wife grew up in, and Miller offered up little resistance to the crazy idea. Miller declared that “Kehlmann splits his time between Berlin and New York with his teenage son and his wife, an international human rights lawyer who grew up under East Germany's communist rule. For them, this subject feels very personal.”     Kehlmann insisted that “she sees a lot of what she experienced in her childhood in the GDR happening in America now.” Miller could only shake her head and weakly offer, “A lot of people would disagree.” Doubling down, Kehlmann proclaimed that, “I mean, what I would say to that is it really depends where and who you are. For us, visa holders, free speech is practically suspended. Our lawyers are telling us 'be very careful, they can take away your visa, so don't go to demonstrations,' don't say, for example, what I just said to you.” As the duo laughed at the last part, Miller wondered, “Why are you saying what you just said to me?” “Well, because someone has to. Someone has to,” Kehlmann insisted. One annoying aspect of comparing Trump’s America to East Germany or Nazi Germany is the sense that the people making the analogy don’t actually believe it. Despite the timing of CBS’s interview, Kehlmann’s book has been out for months, and he’s done plenty of interviews where either he or his host suggested or flat out declared the U.S. is in a similarly dark place. Ironically, the reason Miller interviewed Kehlmann now was because he was in New York to be honored by the New York Public Library because despite all his warnings about not having free speech, he keeps speaking, and nothing bad has happened to him. Here is a transcript for the November 22 show: CBS Saturday Morning 11/22/2025 8:49 AM ET MICHELLE MILLER: Kehlmann splits his time between Berlin and New York with his teenage son and his wife, an international human rights lawyer who grew up under East Germany's communist rule. For them, this subject feels very personal. DANIEL KEHLMANN: She sees a lot of what she experienced in her childhood in the GDR happening in America now. MILLER: A lot of people would disagree. KEHLMANN: I mean, what I would say to that is it really depends where and who you are. For us, visa holders, free speech is practically suspended. Our lawyers are telling us "be very careful, they can take away your visa, so don't go to demonstrations," don't say, for example, what I just said to you. MILLER: Why are you saying what you just said to me? KEHLMANN: Well, because someone has to. Someone has to.

On Sunday, November 2nd, President Donald Trump said that he was considering sending U.S. troops to Nigeria, to help stop the killing of Christians at the hands of Muslim terror groups, claiming that these murders were being sanctioned by the Nigerian government. One day prior, the Administration placed Nigeria back on a list of "Countries of Particular Concern", those that we believe have violated religious freedoms. This past Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the killings and the major networks couldn't be bothered to cover it on their nightly newscasts. Fox News's Special Report with Bret Baier did cover the hearing.  ABC, CBS and NBC all took a pass on giving this the exposure it deserves. This really shouldn't  come as a big shock. From the moment Trump made his declaration, many on the left, including of course  the media, went on the attack against the President, for daring to care about innocent Christians being slaughtered for being Christians. The list includes MSNBC's Reverend Al Sharpton and his guest, House Democrat Whip, Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts. CNN's Abby Phillip, also had a major problem with Trump, and went at it hard with her panelist Scott Jennings.  In September Senator Ted Cruz introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025. The bill protects Christians and other religious minorities being persecuted in Nigeria. Cruz has pointed out that since 2009, 52,000 Nigerian Christians have been murdered by jihadists and over 20,000 Christian churches and religious-based institutions have been destroyed, and on June 13 more than 200 Christians were murdered by Fulani jihadists in a Nigerian village. On Thursday's Special Report, Fox News host Bret Baier introduced their report on the hearing, and Senior National Correspondent Aishah Hasnie, who began her report this way:  HASNIE: Tonight, the Trump Administration says it's developing a plan to compel the Nigerian government to protect Christians from persecution. JONATHAN PRATT, STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: This plan will consider U.S., State, and Treasury engagement on sanctions as well as possible Department of War engagement on counter terrorism and other efforts to protect religious communities. HASNIE: The announcement coming at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing as it looks into the President's redesignation of Nigeria as a country of particular concern. REP CHRIS SMITH (R-NJ): This is not random violence. It is deliberate persecution. Of course, as previously mentioned, for some reason the left has a problem with Trump's concern over the killing of Christians, and his consideration of dealing with it in the strongest terms.  HASNIE: The President has already threatened taking military action. Democrats blasting those threats. REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D): I don't think that's the right way, to go just go on Truth Social and threaten guns a blazing. Hasnie then pointed out some somber stats: "According to the the Observatory For Religious Freedom in Africa. amongst the 30,000 civilians killed in a four year period, more than 6,000 were Muslim while nearly 17,000 were Christians." And Congressman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) got emotional as he declared, "I went to school with kids from Nigeria....It ought to be outrageous."  Yes, "outrageous." The killing of Christians in Nigeria and throughout Africa is and has been "outrageous" for decades. The lack of media interest and coverage of it all is also "outrageous", as is the outrage from the left aimed at those like President Trump, who address this and are trying to put an end to it all. This must be stopped once and for all, and the media must do their part in educating the public about this inhumane horror, and all efforts to end it.