Politics

Almost every mainstream media figure had the same take on this week’s CBS News staff revolt against the new management named to run 60 Minutes. Correspondent Scott Pelley was cheered for telling his new bosses, in a meeting that was then leaked to the media, that they had “murdered” the show and not stood up for “real journalists.” A day after Pelley’s ambush, CBS fired him thus allowing him to take up a new role as a free-speech martyr. Former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens quickly jumped into the controversy by telling the New York Press Club that CBS and 60 Minutes are “institutions, not places where partisans and ideologues should be employed…. I can tell you there’s a rigor in how 60 Minutes approaches every story.

Alex Bruesewitz is the President’s celebrity whisperer. He has brought the likes of YouTube personality Jake Paul and rapper Nicki Minaj into the MAGA fold. He is also the director of a social media empire with 50 million followers, which includes such X accounts as @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump. Bruesewitz is an influencer, both online and in the corridors of the White House. A sense of loyalty to Donald Trump is what motivates him. It started when Bruesewitz was a teenager in Wisconsin. In 2015, he posted a picture of the Trump Tower in Chicago, saying the sign would look good over the White House. Trump retweeted him. So began his life as an online crusader for MAGA.

President Trump has faced relentless, extraordinary efforts to destroy him outside of heretofore normal political combat. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago over alleged mishandling of classified materials despite its own agents' doubts about probable cause. Officials in Colorado, Maine and Illinois sought to remove him from the 2024 ballot using a Civil War-era constitutional clause, before the Supreme Court unanimously reversed them. Trump’s infamous mugshot is the result of Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis booking him on a racketeering indictment that subsequently collapsed. And a civil case brought by writer E.

When the Labour party football team played a group of journalists at Loftus Road two years ago the hacks won 4-1. The politicians’ solitary goal came from a late penalty. When the referee pointed to the spot, the center-forward stepped up, elbowing well-known politicians such as Ed Balls, David Miliband and Sadiq Khan out of the way in his bid for glory. There was a notable absence that day. “Keir [Starmer] had been due to play, but he didn’t turn up,” a witness recalls. “If he had been there, he’d probably have grabbed the ball and there might have been a tussle.” Instead, Andy Burnham said: “This is mine,” and calmly slotted it into the corner. “It was a perfect penalty,” says the witness.

When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: 'When they go low, we go high.' – Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2016  Shut up you ugly fuck. – The Democratic party’s official Twitter handle, replying to Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, on May 27, 2026.  The most disturbing thing about that Democratic response to Stephen Miller is how unshocking it is. We’ve become inured to foul language, even from our political leaders and their social media channels. In our post-literate society, as words lose their power, swearing has become an idle form of punctuation. Donald Trump used to do most of his swearing in private.