One night after hyping “disturbing images” out of Florida during a Border Patrol operation, ABC’s World News Tonight was at it again on Friday. This time, anchor David Muir and correspondent Pierre Thomas labeled the videos “alarming” and “harrowing” despite each of the three examples having a perfectly reasonable explanation. Muir kicked off the segment by declaring, “We move on to the alarming new images this evening. A woman seen being chased by federal agents near New Orleans, screaming to be left alone. She’s a U.S. citizen being chased by Border Patrol, but Homeland Security is now saying tonight it comes amid similar scenes playing out across the country as President Trump's immigration crackdown grows. Pierre Thomas with the images tonight.”     Thomas began his report with “harrowing video showing a woman frantically running away from federal agents in Louisiana. President Trump's nationwide immigration crackdown intensifies.” As it turns out, the episode was just a case of mistaken identity, “Masked border agents chasing that woman on foot as she screams in fear. Running into her house as her stepfather races outside. Initially thinking she was being kidnapped. Demanding answers. That woman was a 23-year-old U.S. citizen. DHS saying in a statement, “All agents left the area as soon as they determined the individual in question was not who they were looking for.’” Not deterred, Thomas tried again with the same video from Thursday's show, “That incident comes after federal agents pulled this woman out of a car during a border operation in Florida as she screamed she was a U.S. citizen.” However, that too had an innocent reason behind it, “Authorities placing her in handcuffs, briefly detaining her. Officials say she was driving her undocumented boyfriend's car and refused to comply with orders to identify herself.” Literally every person in America who is pulled over has to show law enforcement their driver’s license, but apparently this woman thought she was special and didn’t have to. Still not ready to let the issue go, Thomas highlighted, “Newly elected Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva claiming she was assaulted by ICE When she joined protesters who blocked a street in Tucson. She released this video of the alleged incident.” Grijalva herself then claimed, “This is the restaurant I come to literally once a week and was sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent.” Thomas then concluded by reporting, “But tonight, Homeland Security officials pushing back, saying Grijalva was not targeted, but near someone who was pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement. Critics say the immigration campaign has been too aggressive, but David, tonight Homeland Security officials are unapologetic.” According to the video that ABC showed, it was DHS that was being truthful. The officer did not target Grijalva, as her fellow activists broke the law by blocking the road. As Thomas was forced to admit, each of the incidents he showed were not videos that showed an increasingly dystopian society of ICE and Border Patrol operations targeting U.S. citizens, but operations that either had legitimate goals or ceased once it was clear there had been a mistake. Therefore, ABC should retire the sensationalist “disturbing,” “alarming,” and “harrowing” labels. Here is a transcript for the December 5 show: ABC World News Tonight 12/5/2025 6:34 PM ET DAVID MUIR: We move on to the alarming new images this evening. A woman seen being chased by federal agents near New Orleans, screaming to be left alone. She’s a U.S. citizen being chased by Border Patrol, but Homeland Security is now saying tonight it comes amid similar scenes playing out across the country as President Trump's immigration crackdown grows. Pierre Thomas with the images tonight. JACELYNN GUZMAN: Leave me alone! PIERRE THOMAS: Tonight, harrowing video showing a woman frantically running away from federal agents in Louisiana. President Trump's nationwide immigration crackdown intensifies. GUZMAN: Leave me alone! THOMAS: Masked border agents chasing that woman on foot as she screams in fear. Running into her house as her stepfather races outside. Initially thinking she was being kidnapped. Demanding answers. That woman was a 23-year-old U.S. citizen. DHS saying in a statement, “all agents left the area as soon as they determined the individual in question was not who they were looking for.” That incident comes after federal agents pulled this woman out of a car during a border operation in Florida as she screamed she was a U.S. citizen. WOMAN: I'm a U.S. citizen! Please help me! This is unfair, why are you doing this to me? THOMAS: Authorities placing her in handcuffs, briefly detaining her. Officials say she was driving her undocumented boyfriend's car and refused to comply with orders to identify herself. And tonight, newly elected Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva claiming she was assaulted by ICE When she joined protesters who blocked a street in Tucson. She released this video of the alleged incident. ADELITA GRIJALVA: This is the restaurant I come to literally once a week and was sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent. THOMAS: But tonight, Homeland Security officials pushing back, saying Grijalva was not targeted, but near someone who was pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement. Critics say the immigration campaign has been too aggressive, but David, tonight Homeland Security officials are unapologetic.

The holiday season is passing quickly. Thanksgiving is already in the rear view mirror, soon to be joined by Christmas and Hanukkah. And come the fast approaching January 1st the bell officially rings to welcome in 2026. Which is another way of saying, the 2026 congressional election year is about to dawn. Which, in turn, raises what should be obvious questions. Those questions would be:  How will the liberal “mainstream” media cover the 2026 election?  Will they make the election a referendum on President Trump?  As a result of 2026, who will the media pronounce the presumed winner in the 2028 presidential sweepstakes? For both parties? Common sense says that the answers to all of those questions are not yet knowable. And probably won’t be until the day after the 2026 election. But of one thing, based on past experience with the media, Americans can be sure. They know that the media coverage of the 2026 election will lean left. Beginning long before the election has even been held. With a heavy bias to saying that President Trump and Republicans are the losers.  The off-year elections gave Democrats great hope of a dramatic sweep to retake the House and Senate. Affordability and every other news topic will be grist for Democrats to blame the current status quo on the GOP. Redistricting offers hope of staying in the House majority, but can it match the sway of incessant media bias? In the long ago - the very long ago - of the 1960 presidential campaign between Democrat Senator John F. Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore H. White wrote what would be the first of many books and articles following and reporting in detail on a presidential campaign. In doing so White, writing in his bestselling The Making of the President 1960 described the press covering Democrat Kennedy as follows:  There is no doubt that this kindliness, respect and cultivation of the press colored all the reporting that came from the Kennedy campaign, and the contrast colored adversely the reporting of the Nixon campaign. By the last weeks of the campaign, those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps-they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers. When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr. Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier. To say the least, there has been much political water over the political dam since 1960, and the shape of the media is very different. But the essence of the problem with the 1960 media following Democrat Kennedy as described by White remains -- if not being even more problematic. The hard fact here is that much of today’s media, as with the 1960 media and Nixon, has a visceral loathing of both President Trump and Republicans in general. Which in turn will, in 2026, affect the media coverage of the election. And affect that coverage both in terms of individual Senate, House and governor races as well as the overall coverage of the election in general.  So as the final lap of the holiday season approaches, rest up. Because when 2026 finally dawns, the media’s 2026 election coverage will begin. And it won’t be pretty.

There is something about the podcast world that encourages former network journalists to let the mask slip and reveal that they really were the liberal activists critics alleged they were all along. Former CBS anchor Connie Chung was the latest example, as she joined former ESPN and current Morning Joe talking head Pablo Torre on his Pablo Torre Finds Out Thursday show to discuss the alleged demise of CBS since David Ellison and Bari Weiss have taken over, despite any lack of significant changes. Torre set Chung up by wondering, “By the way, what's it like to watch CBS right now?”     Chung, who was on with husband Maury Povich, began by admitting, “We don't. I mean, I can't.” Usually when someone admits to not knowing anything about a topic, that is considered the end of their contributions to the discussion, but Chung continued, “The paradigm has completely changed in news, and we have so much opinion that the truth doesn't hold value anymore, and what we end up doing is trying to — we as consumers. Trying to find the truth. We can't find good old-fashioned facts, and it distresses me so terribly.” Chung also claimed that “CBS is a whole different realization that I had worked for. CBS has now been taken over, thanks to greedy owners: Sherry Redstone, partnering with David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son. And their greed has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble, to crash into crumbles, and then they've hired this—I don't know what to call Bari Weiss. “ Raining on both Chung and Torre’s entire premise, Povich wasn’t inclined to freak out, “Well, she was there the other day when Trump goes on 60 Minutes. I thought it was a decent interview. It was okay.” For Torre, the fact that the interview even happened was problematic: You’re talking about Nora O'Donnell's interview. Well, part of my concern, by the way, and I find it very, if I were you, I'd find it very difficult to watch the administration of CBS News wear the costume of CBS News, getting to cosplay to pretend that nothing is different even though the very premise of their acquisition of the network was, in fact, at the discretion and blessing of the president, who was the interview subject in that video that we're describing. And so just the very basic premise of that feels very hard to stomach if you care about anything resembling adversarial journalism. Chung agreed, “If you care about serious news. When I worked at CBS, it was owned by William Paley, and he actually—who made it a point of allowing the news division to be autonomous and not have to worry about the bottom line… We reporters are watchdogs of government. It's our job to report information that is not fed to us.  It would be nice to say that the liberal meltdowns about Weiss are well-founded and CBS has reformed itself, but the new management has had mixed results. On one hand, Weiss has gone after CBS’s woke excesses by sacking the Race and Culture unit, but on the other, CBS is still making Trump-East Germany comparisons, and Weiss is reportedly hiring Matt Gutman, the ABC reporter who said that Tyler Robinson’s texts with his trans furry lover were “very touching” after multiple other suspensions. Here is a transcript of the December 4 show: Pablo Torre Finds Out 12/4/2025 PABLO TORRE: By the way, what's it like to watch CBS right now? CONNIE CHUNG: We don't. I mean, I can't. The paradigm has completely changed in news, and we have so much opinion that the truth doesn't hold value anymore, and what we end up doing is trying to — we as consumers. Trying to find the truth. We can't find good old-fashioned facts, and it distresses me so terribly. CBS is a whole different realization that I had worked for. CBS has now been taken over, thanks to greedy owners: Sherry Redstone, partnering with David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son. And their greed has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble, to crash into crumbles, and then they've hired this—I don't know what to call Bari Weiss. MAURY POVICH: I don't either. CHUNG: She is, you know, I, I just don't know. POVICH: Yeah, but she's—you know, we'll see. CHUNG: It's not a big “we'll see” as if she could possibly restore— POVICH: Well, she was there the other day when Trump goes on 60 Minutes. I thought it was a decent interview. It was okay. TORRE: You’re talking about Nora O'Donnell's interview. CHUNG: Yes. TORRE: Well, part of my concern, by the way, and I find it very, if I were you, I'd find it very difficult to watch the administration of CBS News wear the costume of CBS News, getting to cosplay to pretend that nothing is different even though the very premise of their acquisition of the network was, in fact, at the discretion and blessing of the president, who was the interview subject in that video that we're describing. CHUNG: That’s right. TORRE: And so just the very basic premise of that feels very hard to stomach if you care about anything resembling adversarial journalism. CHUNG: Journalism. If you care about serious news. When I worked at CBS, it was owned by William Paley, and he actually—who made it a point of allowing the news division to be autonomous and not have to worry about the bottom line. He had a president by the name of Frank Stanton, who went before Congress time and time again to defend the fourth estate. Now we have a complete dismantling of that kind of social responsibility. That we are watchdogs. We reporters are watchdogs of government. It's our job to report information that is not fed to us. 

MS Now host Jonathan Capehart joined Friday’s PBS News Hour to discuss the fallout from the September 2 second strike on a drug boat. Showing a lack of understanding of how such operations work and counterexamples, Capehart demanded to know why the administration did not arrest the surviving crew members and falsely claimed there is no evidence that the boats are carrying drugs. Host Geoff Bennett began by wondering, “So, Washington has been consumed this past week with a debate over a series of strikes that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a suspected Venezuelan drug boat back in September. And, Jonathan, the administration says that strike and others like it are necessary to protect U.S. interests. When you look at all that exists in the public realm right now, does that rationale withstand scrutiny?”     Capehart began by wondering if there was even any evidence for the strikes, “No, it doesn't. It would help if the president and the Defense Secretary, this administration, would show us the evidence. You keep saying that these people are drug runners. So — and you know who they are. So tell us. You keep saying that they are shipping these drugs, that's what's in those boats. Well, show us. Show us the evidence. But we don't have the evidence.” Additionally, Capehart claimed, “The other thing is, those two people who were killed in that second strike, since then, there have been others and there have been survivors. If this is such a war on drugs to protect the American people, why aren't those survivors in U.S. federal custody and not repatriated to their countries? There are so many questions here that go well beyond what we have been talking about this week. And that's not to diminish the importance of why we're talking about this.” On this specific strike, the survivors were killed because, according to Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, they climbed back aboard a vessel that was still floating to continue their drug run and therefore a legitimate target. Second, on Capehart’s larger concern about repatriation, there have been instances where survivors of an attack on a submersible have been sent back to their countries. In one instance, Ecuador said it would not be prosecuting one of the survivors—Ecuadorian authorities claimed the crime did not take place in their territory—while Colombia announced it would prosecute the other. If the far-left president of Colombia thinks they are drug runners, that should be good enough for Capehart.

I don't know about you, but when considering how our country should fight its conflicts, I like to follow the advice of our enemies--like the Taliban. Well, maybe not. But that was the approach taken today by Morning Joe. Asked to comment on the controversy surrounding the September 2nd drone strike on drug smugglers, MS NOW's Senior National Security Reporter David Rohde said: "I'll be honest, in Afghanistan, the Taliban saw drone strikes as cowardly-- that American forces weren't willing to come fight them face to face on the ground." The irony is that, just seconds earlier, Jonathan Lemire said that yesterday: "The Signalgate inspector general's report was made public. Pete Hegseth looks bad there as well, in terms of, as it was put, that he was putting American military personnel at risk by sharing these war plans on Signal." We agree that putting American military personnel at risk unnecessarily is bad. But Rohde/Morning Joe/MS NOW apparently believe that putting American military personnel at risk is the way to go! Take the Taliban's advice, America: come out and fight like a man! Don't resort to those cowardly drone strikes! We say that when confronting a foe, take the Indiana Jones approach: don't engage on his terms — use the most advanced weaponry available. Note: Interestingly, Rohde, while working on a book, was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2008 and held captive for over seven months, until he and a colleague escaped. Yet here he was today promoting the Taliban's view of the American military. Did David suffer a form of Stockholm Syndrome, in which he came to identify with his captors? Here's the transcript. MS NOW Morning Joe 12/5/25 6:18 am ET JONATHAN LEMIRE: We have heard Republicans, including some on our air, like Congressman Turner yesterday from the House Armed Services Committee, suggesting, look, Congress has not signed off on these attacks. We would have real reluctance if the president were to escalate them on land. But yet, there hasn't actually been much of a mechanism, David Rohde, for the Congress to step in and to try to, beyond what we saw yesterday, to really get to the bottom of this.  And we have, you know, and the timing of this shouldn't be lost. This, the examination, the close scrutiny that this strike, the September 2nd strike has received, also comes on the same day that the Signalgate Inspector General's report was made public.  Pete Hegseth looks bad there as well, in terms of, you know, as it was put, that he was putting American military personnel at risk by sharing these war plans on Signal, inadvertently, with a journalist. And yet, we have him on social media yesterday doing a performative victory lap and sort of strutting about, like, look, I'm under this pressure, but we're just going to push the button and hit another boat.  DAVID ROHDE: And I'll be honest, in Afghanistan, the Taliban saw drone strikes as cowardly -- that American forces weren't willing to come fight them face-to-face on the ground.  LEMIRE: Yes. ROHDE: And not that, you know, it's going to make the drug traffickers angry, but it's just this idea that our technology, and just wiping out people are all going to roll over and give up.