The re-election of Donald Trump has created overwhelming angst among the press. With Trump, they have been like the opposite of the Humpty Dumpty rhyme. The media are all the king’s horses and all the king’s men -- and they couldn’t tear Humpty Dumpty apart. All of their screeching about his menace only makes him successful. Longtime CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl engaged in conversation at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with columnist Peggy Noonan, and they both agreed the legacy media are "fraying" – for 20 years, Noonan insisted.  "I'm extremely worried about the press," Stahl said, as she dragged out her usual story about Trump and press criticism. “I once asked Donald Trump why do you keep pounding on the press? This was right after he won, in 2016....It’s kinda boring, you say the same thing over and over, and you won! It’s time to drop it!” This is a bizarre demand, since no one in the press announced, “well, Trump won, so it’s kind of boring to keep criticizing him, saying the same thing over and over.” Stahl said she asked why he would do it, and Trump replied: “I do it, and I repeat it, because the more I do that, the less people are going to believe you when you say negative things about me….And it’s happened!” The media’s public trust ratings are the worst they’ve ever been in the television era. This alleged Trump comment did not air on CBS, although Stahl drags out the anecdote like it’s nefarious. It’s the exact opposite of the Stahl shtick -- if I attack Trump, and I repeat it, it means the more I do it, the less people are going to believe Trump when he attacks the press. But he’s won that battle. Lesley Stahl worried sick that the 'legacy media is dead': Lesley Stahl: "I'm extremely worried about the press. I despair. I worry greatly. We're at the point where if the POTUS is going to say 'Legacy media is dead'. I'm very dark about it." Never been more optimistic. pic.twitter.com/8a2y3NMJA5 — Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) December 11, 2024 “I despair, seriously. I worry greatly,” Stahl said. “We're at a point where if the President of the United States is going to say 'Legacy media is dead'…It is, kind of, sort of hobbling right now. And I don’t know how it recovers. I'm very dark about it." Noonan made the mistake of associating an unpopular press with the end of freedom of the press, which is not the same thing. The First Amendment doesn’t automatically grant sainthood to the press. You’re allowed to think the press has performed terribly without ending the First Amendment. That’s freedom of speech. Noonan didn’t push back on Stahl. She could ask if CBS and 60 Minutes ever did anything wrong that undermined trust in the media. Dan Rather offered the nation phony documents about George W. Bush on 60 Minutes II. Lesley Stahl is infamous among Republicans for lecturing Trump in 2020 that you could not report on the Hunter Biden laptop because it could not be verified. CBS reporter Catherine Herridge verified the laptop in 2022, and she’s no longer at CBS. While Stahl was very rough with Trump, Scott Pelley’s interviews with President Biden sounded promotional. In October of 2023, Pelley sympathetically asked, “Mr. President, given these two wars and the dysfunction in Congress, are you sure that you want to run again?” (Imagine all the Biden babble that was edited out.) In October, CBS Face the Nation viewers saw a typical word-salad answer from Kamala Harris, but on the 60 Minutes primetime special a day later, CBS edited in a much shorter and more coherent soundbite. When reporters start whining about their unpopularity, questioners should press them to explore what they may have done to deserve unpopularity. Conversations like these leave the impression that these egotistical journalists are incapable of introspection. 

After Trump’s convincing election victory last month, the PBS News Hour is finding its far-left feet again. On Tuesday night it treated a silly left-wing study from a discredited lefty scaremongering outfit as a disturbing revelation about Trump-fueled misogyny, based on some tasteless playground humor being spread around the internet for shock value. Anchor Amna Nawaz: After last month's election, researchers documented a stunning rise in misogynistic rhetoric and attacks. Laura Barron-Lopez is here now with a conversation about what's behind that surge and how experts are combating it. Thank goodness the “experts” (i.e. censorious left-wing academics) are on the scene. Laura Barron-Lopez: In just a 24-hour period after Election Day, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked a 4600 percent increase in mentions of the terms, "Your body, my choice" and "Get back in the kitchen" on the social media platform X....One post by far-right activist Nick Fuentes has been viewed nearly 100 million times. But the misogyny is not just online. For more on this trend and efforts to fight it, I'm joined by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL....help us unpack this increase. What exactly did we see in this rise in misogynistic attacks online right after the election? Seriously? A 4,600 percent increase? In a 24-hour period right after the election? And if the Left responds with massive online outrage and protest as it cites the term, isn't that included in the "volume of mentions"?  As always with the left, it all came down to the issue of no-limit abortion. Cynthia Miller-Idriss: ....what we saw right around the election, leading up to the election with a candidate who was a woman, a woman of color, and then the reproductive rights that were also sort of at the heart of the election in many ways was a celebration in many ways by some young men who were viewed — whose posts were viewed many, many millions of times, of this reclaiming of power over women and power over women's bodies. Miller-Idriss at American University's PERIL has previously linked going to the gym with far-right extremism, delivered two underwhelming anecdotes.  Miller-Idriss: Well, we have seen a lot of reports and heard a lot of reports, including in our lab, from schools and universities, even from an elementary school, whose -- a parent who reached out to me and said her 10-year-old daughter had heard a boy chant at her, "Your body, my choice." I mean, it's unclear if he even knows what he's saying, but he knows that it's a sort of slur and an insult to say that. We had a man walking around a college campus in Texas holding up a sign that said "Women Are Property," and we have had other kinds of chants of "Go back to the kitchen" and sort of threats to women in their bodies on college campuses across the country. Were playground insults and some oddball holding a sign on a college campus truly worth an entire taxpayer-funded news segment? One wonders where this concern for campus propriety was during the actual violence of the pro-Hamas rallies last spring. The whole segment boiled down to two liberal prudes wringing their hands about insults on the online playground, as if it meant anything in real life. Barron-Lopez: Does posting misogynistic content, is that a predictor of future actions? Miller-Idriss: It's not a direct predictor. You can't sort of draw a one-to-one correspondence. But we know that the biggest predictor of support for political violence right now or of willingness to engage in it, or among the top three predictors, depending on the survey, is misogyny or hostile sexism.... Barron-Lopez: Does it drive actions such as domestic violence at all? Miller-Idriss: It does drive actions like domestic and intimate partner violence and also other forms of stalking, harassment, rape threats, sexual assault. And those things are also predictors and underpinners of mass violence…. Miller-Idriss had previously teamed up on a report with the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which took the side of radical Islam when it put Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who risked her life as a Muslim apostate, on a “hate list” as an “anti-Muslim extremist” for criticizing radical Islam’s brutal treatment of women. SPLC is still trying to scare elderly liberals out of their money: Barron-Lopez: Today, PERIL, your organization, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a guide: "Not Just a Joke: Understanding and Preventing Gender and Sexuality-Based Bigotry." It's meant to help communities deal with the issues that we're talking about. What is the purpose of this guide and who do you hope it reaches? (Things are not going particularly well for the segment on X.) This hysteria-based segment was brought to you in part by BNSF Railway. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 12/10/24 7:33:29 p.m. (ET) Anchor Amna Nawaz: After last month's election, researchers documented a stunning rise in misogynistic rhetoric and attacks. Laura Barron-Lopez is here now with a conversation about what's behind that surge and how experts are combating it. Laura Barron-Lopez: In just a 24-hour period after Election Day, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked a 4600 percent increase in mentions of the terms, "Your body, my choice" and "Get back in the kitchen" on the social media platform X. One post, by far-right activist Nick Fuentes has been viewed nearly 100 million times. But the misogyny is not just online. For more on this trend and efforts to fight it, I'm joined by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL….First, help us unpack this increase. What exactly did we see in this rise in misogynistic attacks online right after the election? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Well, first, we have been seeing that increasing trend for probably something like 18 months to two years over the last period of time on many social media platforms. And what we saw right around the election, leading up to the election with a candidate who was a woman, a woman of color, and then the reproductive rights that were also sort of at the heart of the election in many ways was a celebration in many ways by some young men who were viewed -- whose posts were viewed many, many millions of times of this reclaiming of power over women and power over women's bodies. Laura Barron-Lopez: And, as I mentioned, at least some of that same rhetoric and activity has since moved offline. How and where has that manifested? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: We have seen a lot of reports and heard a lot of reports, including in our lab, from schools and universities, even from an elementary school, whose -- a parent who reached out to me and said her 10-year-old daughter had heard a boy chant at her, "Your body, my choice." I mean, it's unclear if he even knows what he's saying, but he knows that it's a sort of slur and an insult to say that. We had a man walking around a college campus in Texas holding up a sign that said "Women Are Property," and we have had other kinds of chants of "Go back to the kitchen" and sort of threats to women in their bodies on college campuses across the country. Laura Barron-Lopez: Can you put this into the broader context of what we have been seeing around misogyny and sexism in recent years, and what is driving this trend? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Yes. Well, we have had — just like we have had normalization of other types of hateful rhetoric, anti-immigrant rhetoric, racist rhetoric, white supremacist rhetoric over the last five or six years, in particular, surges of that online, of conspiracy theories, we have had anti-feminist rhetoric, and rhetoric blaming women often for a very real and legitimate crisis being experienced by boys and men. And so it's one thing to say, yes, boys and men are more isolated and lonely. They're also the victims of bullying and violence at the hands of other men, a culture that valorizes dominance and aggression as sort of hallmarks of masculinity. But to take that crisis of men and masculinity and make it a crisis of misogyny, you really need the online world incubating the kind of hateful rhetoric that we're seeing. Laura Barron-Lopez: Does posting misogynistic content, is that a predictor of future actions? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: It's not a direct predictor. You can't sort of draw a one-to-one correspondence. But we know that the biggest predictor of support for political violence right now or of willingness to engage in it, or among the top three predictors, depending on the survey, is misogyny or hostile sexism. So beliefs in a hierarchy of superiority, beliefs in the inferiority of women drive support for political violence. And we also know that other types of hateful rhetoric produce surges in offline violence. Laura Barron-Lopez: Does it drive actions such as domestic violence at all? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: It does. It does drive actions like domestic and intimate partner violence and also other forms of stalking, harassment, rape threats, sexual assault. And those things are also predictors and underpinners of mass violence. So when we see almost every terrorist actor in the U.S. and a lot of school shooters had prior histories of harassment, stalking, rape threats, sexual assault, and worse, so you have those types of problems that are red flags and warning signs and are often ignored. Laura Barron-Lopez: Today, PERIL, your organization, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a guide: "Not Just a Joke: Understanding and Preventing Gender and Sexuality-Based Bigotry." It's meant to help communities deal with the issues that we're talking about. What is the purpose of this guide and who do you hope it reaches? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Well, over the last two years, we have gotten increasing requests from parents, from teachers, from mental health counselors, faith leaders, and others for help with misogyny and other forms of hate that are happening among boys, in particular, middle and high school boys. And we just got another request from a school this week trying to — what can we do? And so we will go in and offer training. But we finally realized we need a guide. And so the guide is — lays out some of the definitions. What are boys seeing online? What are some of the red flags and warning signs? How are girls exposed to some of this content also through what's called tradwife content and ideas about what it is to be a man or a woman in society? And how are they being manipulated, often by bad actors online who are trying to get them to pay for subscriptions to things and manipulate them for their own profit? Laura Barron-Lopez: What are the top recommendations that you're making in this guide to parents, but also teachers and others who interact with people who are susceptible to this content? Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Yes. I think the first recommendation is take it seriously. And that's why we called the guide "Not Just a Joke," because so often it's dismissed as locker room talk or as just a joke, really, and it couldn't mean anything, it's not serious. And one of the things we really emphasize is that taking it seriously, attending to the harms that come from things like, "Go make me a sandwich" or "Get back in the kitchen," or just jokey comments that actually sort of express a sense of entitlement to girls and women's labor, servitude, the entitlement to their bodies, those are harmful. They're harmful to everyone in the communitynd so taking it seriously and not reacting with shame, because that can drive young people further online, but with curiosity about why they find these kinds of statements attractive is a really important step. Laura Barron-Lopez: Cynthia Miller-Idriss, thank you for your time. Cynthia Miller-Idriss: Thank you for having me.

The same day Daniel Penny, the retired Marine and architecture student, pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and negligent homicide, a New York grand jury declined to recommend charges against Jordan Williams. Williams and his girlfriend, who are both black, were on a Brooklyn subway train when Williams, 20 years old, was approached by an aggressive 36-year-old ex-con homeless black man, Devictor Ouedraogo. In a confrontation captured on video, Ouedraogo punched Williams’ girlfriend in the face, and Williams then pulled a knife and fatality stabbed Ouedraogo in the chest. Williams was later arrested and charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. Williams’ lawyer said, “The victim was menacing people, as all of us have probably seen on the subway, erratic, deranged, crazy and in many people’s faces before he even encounters my client.” New York Mayor Eric Adams said: “A person with severe mental health illness, what appears to be severe mental health illness, got engaged in a very violent way. The investigation is going to take its course.” A grand jury, citing self-defense, declined to indict Williams, who worked at FedEx and had no criminal record. The Brooklyn district attorney dropped the charges. Unlike in the case of Penny, no “activists” publicly accused Williams of engaging in “racially motivated vigilantism.” As to the case of Penny, who is white, Jordan Neely, a black schizophrenic on drugs and a career violent criminal with over 40 arrests, boarded a New York subway train and threatened passengers. Penny took Neely to the floor with the assistance of two other passengers, one named Eric Gonzalez, and applied a chokehold for several minutes until the police arrived. Penny, unaware that Neely had died, spoke to detectives without requesting a lawyer, and was released without charges. In come the “activists.” CBS News wrote: “Protesters have said they will continue to demonstrate until Penny is arrested. ... Authorities say a crowd of about 100 people stormed the (subway) station, with some jumping onto the subway tracks in protest. At least 12 people were arrested during the demonstration, where multiple officers were injured ...” The New York public advocate, an elected position, demanded charges against Penny: “To say anything else is an equivocation that will only further a narrative that devalues the life of a Black homeless man with mental health challenges and encourages an attitude of dehumanization of New Yorkers in greatest need.” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg got the message and charged Penny. The jury deadlocked the first charge of manslaughter, and the judge dismissed it. The head of the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter said, “Today, white supremacy got another victory. Today, the KKK (Ku Klux Klan), the Klansmen, the evil in America got another victory.” After Penny’s acquittal on the second charge, the BLM head said: “We need some Black vigilantes. People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us?” Meanwhile, nearly half of the nation’s homicide victims are black, almost all killed by other blacks. Of New York’s nondomestic homicides, in a city that is around 25% black, the NYPD statistics show black victims and black perpetrators account for 71% of the total. In Chicago, over the Fourth of July weekend, more than 100 people were shot, 19 fatally, almost all in the mostly black areas of Chicago’s South and West Sides. Where’s Black Lives Matter, if black lives matter? If Penny were black, there would have been no charges. If Neely were white, there would have been no charges. If both were black, or both were white, there would have been no charges. So, to summarize, Daniel Penny, a white man, subdued Jordan Neely, a black man, with the help of two other good Samaritans, one named Eric Gonzalez. Neely posed a threat to passengers on the subway, many, if not most, of whom were black. The D.A. who charged Penny is black. The mayor of New York, who praised Penny’s heroism, is black. The jury that found Penny not guilty included four “people of color.” Yet Penny’s acquittal, according to the head of the N.Y. chapter of Black Lives Matter, means “white supremacy got another victory”?! Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on X @larryelder.

Following the $787 million defamation settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems in 2023, CNN did a lot of gloating and spiking the ball as they used it as a cudgel to attack the credibility of their cable news rival. But that celebration seems to have come back to bite them as U.S. Navy veteran and Plaintiff Zachary Young won a motion, on Thursday, to cite CNN’s coverage as evidence that CNN supposedly took the possibility of defamation seriously, in his upcoming $1 billion defamation trial. In a filing on Monday, Young’s lead counsel, Vel Freedman explained the importance of examining CNN’s coverage of the Fox News settlement:  If CNN recognized the significance of the Dominion settlement as a cautionary tale and yet still chose to defame Young, that fact demonstrates the insufficiency of prior monetary amounts in deterring CNN’s misconduct. Such evidence illuminates the severity of CNN’s disregard for journalistic standards, underscores it knowingly undertook risk for clicks and viewers, and bolsters the argument that punitive award is necessary to deter CNN and others from future defamation. Freedman also noted that in reporting on the settlement, Jake Tapper (one of the CNN journalists partially responsible for putting CNN in hot water) “made these statements as a CNN agent acting within the scope of his employment. The statement is probative because it is CNN’s acknowledgement of proper journalistic standards.” In the reporting in question, Tapper proclaimed: “This is a time for all journalists to be extra careful about our own reporting, to make sure that we adhere strictly to facts and cogent analysis.” In a filing in support of their motion to bar mention of the Fox News-Dominion settlement, on Tuesday, CNN counsel Charles Tobin suggested that Young’s desires to cite CNN’s reporting on the matter “lay bare the fundamental gamesmanship at play.” However, he did note that “the reporting at issue in the lawsuit was published in November 2021, nearly a year-and-a-half prior to the April 2023 Fox-Dominion settlement” [emphasis his]. But that would also mean that CNN was doing a victory lap and mocking Fox News while they were embroiled in their own possibly costly defamation suit; a suit that has largely gone unmentioned in the wider media industry that reveled in Fox News’s embarrassment. In his order to allow the mention of the settlement, exclusively obtained by NewsBusters, Judge William Scott Henry of Florida's 14th Circuit Court said CNN’s “general request to exclude all references to the Dominion settlement appears to be overly broad.” “While the amount of the settlement would not be relevant to assigning an amount if punitive damages were to be awarded in this case, the Court can envision a myriad of ways in which the lawsuit could be brought up during the course of the trial that could be appropriate based on the circumstances,” he continued. Concluding: “ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that Defendant’s Motion in Limine to Exclude All References to Fox News’ Dominion Settlement, or Prior Statements About Fox News or President Donald Trump is DENIED. However, the subjects and areas of inquiry raised in the Motion may be subject to contemporaneous objection at trial.”

One question emerging from the presidential election exit polls is the disconnect between Black men and women and Hispanic men and women. Donald Trump received support from 21% of Black men and 7% of Black women, a disparity of 14 points. He got support from 54% of Hispanic men and 39% of Hispanic women, a disparity of 15 points. There was also a disparity in Trump’s support among white men and women, but much smaller -- 7 points. So why is Trump having far greater success among Black and Hispanic men than Black and Hispanic women? It’s clear that the major issue that drove the vote in this election was the economy. A Gallup poll done in October showed the economy as the number one concern of voters. Per exit polling, 68% said the economy is “not good” or “poor” and 31% said it is “excellent” or “good.” Of the 68% saying the economy is not good/poor, 70% voted for Trump. Per a Gallup poll published last March, 27% of Black women under 60 said they are planning to start their own business in the next 12 months, compared to 14% of Hispanic women and 5% of white women. In the same survey Gallup asked, “Would you be interested in starting a business if you had the resources?” Among Black women, 57% said yes; among Hispanic women, 55% said yes; among white women, 38% said yes; 51% of all U.S. men and 44% of all U.S. women said yes. The entrepreneurial aspirations of Black and Hispanic women are among the highest in the country. Per Gallup, “while just 13% of men under 60 say they lack the financial and/or nonfinancial resources to start a business, a third of women in this age group (33%) say the same.” Gallup continues that improving access of women to capital is important “when women-owned businesses still make up only 22% of employer businesses in the United States.” I think that these entrepreneurial-driven Black and Hispanic women should care a lot about a healthy and growing national economy. Nothing is more important for business success and raising capital. I would urge these women to listen to a recent interview done with one of the country’s greatest entrepreneurs, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, done at the New York Times DealBook Summit. Bezos has never been known as a conservative or among the backers of President-elect Donald Trump. He owns The Washington Post, which is a left-of-center paper. However, in this interview, Bezos speaks positively about the election of Trump and specifically talks about the importance of deregulation to improving the economy. “He (Trump) seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. ... If I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.” He also observes that our country “has the best risk capital system in the world ... You can raise $50 million of seed capital to do something that only has a 10% chance of working.” Bezos discusses his own experience, starting from nothing, building a business in a world of new technology and becoming one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. He describes raising his first million dollars for Amazon by meeting with 60 venture capitalists, of whom 22 agreed to put up $50,000 each. Bezos emphasizes that the way out of our economic problems is economic growth. And here he emphasizes the importance of deregulation and gives a vote of confidence to Trump. So why, when there is such disproportionate entrepreneurial spirit among Black women, did only 7% support the candidate who one of the nation’s most successful and legendary entrepreneurs says will deliver the economy the nation needs? Certainly, Black and Hispanic men are getting the message. It’s time for Black and Hispanic women to get it and start focusing less on identity politics and more on what experience tells us will work.