In an attempt to get some positive press after making good on pulling Stephen Colbert’s popular “The Late Show” off the air and replacing it with Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed,” CBS issued a press statement claiming it was a sound business decision despite a massive drop in viewership.According to a report from the Daily Beast, CBS claimed on Thursday the unpopular move represented sound business strategy, stating: "We're proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost-prohibitive to continue. With this 'time buy' model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing."The network reiterated its assertion that canceling Colbert's show had been "purely a financial decision," which skeptical late-night competitor Jimmy Kimmel had already rejected, stating: "There's just not a snowball's chance in hell that that's anywhere near accurate," Kimmel said. "The idea that Stephen Colbert's show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical."According to an earlier report from The Beast, "Comics Unleashed" drew only 995,000 viewers in its debut episode, while late-night talk shows hosted by Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon topped more than 1.5 million viewers on the same night — and notably, Kimmel's was a rerun, not a fresh broadcast.Even more embarrassingly for CBS, Colbert's YouTube presence continues to outperform Allen's new show, the report added. A one-night appearance by Colbert on the public access TV show "Only in Monroe" drew 928,000 views on his YouTube channel alone — a figure that doesn't include viewers on other platforms.
Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. We Need the SAVE Act, Hand-Counted Ballots to Assure Free Elections Democrats have abandoned making life […]
The Lakers’ priority of building a roster that better fits around superstar Luka Doncic is obvious. It was a talking point last summer. It has been again entering this offseason, which is the first summer they’ll have the salary and roster flexibility to construct a team around Doncic that best fits his needs. And there...
Katie Miller, who is married to Stephen Miller, lashed out at a young Democratic operative on Thursday, after the Democratic Party’s official account called Miller’s husband an “ugly f–k.” The aggrieved wife of the top White House adviser posted the operative’s picture on X and ridiculed her personal life, declaring, “She’s 30, unmarried with no kids,” and adding: “This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like.”That liberal is Paulina Mangubat, 30, who writes many of the Democratic National Committee’s tweets as its deputy chief mobilization officer. After Katie Miller named her and posted her picture, the MAGA fury started rolling in. I spoke with Mangubat Friday morning. The MAGA backlash has been swift, with people circulating images of her engagement photo shoot and insulting her and her fiancé’s appearance. People are posting decade-old pictures of her while commenting on her appearance, weight, and even her happiness in life.But in our interview, Mangubat stressed emphatically that this dustup should refocus everyone on the real victims of the moment.“Ultimately, this is not really about me,” Mangubat told me. “It’s about the people who are really being attacked by the Trump administration.”This saga all started after MAGA extremist Ken Paxton won the Texas GOP Senate primary, after which the DNC posted a fairly conventional tweet that included a picture of the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, adding: “It’s time to take back Texas.”That prompted Stephen Miller to tweet: “Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.” It’s a strange claim—Talarico is not transgender, though he’s spoken up for trans rights—but it’s obviously in keeping with the GOP strategy, which is to portray Talarico as woke and effeminate. Regardless, that’s the tweet that the DNC feed—Mangubat—responded to with “Shut up you ugly f–k.”Mangubat’s tweet was approved by the DNC. She says that the effort to make the Democratic Party’s social media presence more nimble and responsive is the much more important story here, especially given how well Trump and the GOP prosecuted the information wars in 2024. The DNC says its program has grown, pointing to an additional 6.3 million followers across all its social media platforms. It claims the programs have produced over nine billion impressions since Trump took office.Mangubat says that when Democrats did research into how to reach more people, “overwhelmingly what we heard is people want us to be more direct, speak more like real people, and be faster.”Speaking like real people also means letting them react in real time with real feeling—which is what happened here with Stephen Miller, Mangubat says.“All we did was say what everyone else is thinking, which is, ‘Shut up—that’s not what people care about right now,’” Mangubat says. She added that there’s no reason to regret using the “ugly” moniker to describe Miller.“What he’s doing is ugly—siccing federal agents on civilians, applauding when families are separated. It is ugly behavior,” Mangubat said. “The reason this happened is because Stephen Miller, who is one of the most powerful men in the country, decided that it would be a good use of his time to go on Twitter and hurl an untrue and transphobic attack against James Talarico.”It’s worth stressing that the roots of this saga lie in the depiction of Talarico as transgender—and that this was intended as a vicious insult. Indeed, Stephen Miller went on a tear after this exchange, going on Fox News and ripping Talarico as soft and effeminate in every way he could. Miller derided Talarico as “transitioning to female,” mocking his testosterone count and claiming Talarico’s blood is made of “soy milk.”It’s also worth dwelling on the vision of masculinity that Paxton presents. His wife divorced him on biblical grounds, he’s been impeached and indicted while in office, and he has subjected LGBTQ people to relentless abuse.But this is very much the MAGA vision of masculinity in action, according to Stephen Miller. During that Fox News hit, Miller described Paxton as a “real conservative” and “patriotic” and “God-fearing,” while claiming that Talarico will be roundly rejected by red-blooded Texans, given their manly “pioneer heritage” and “frontier history.” The roots of this saga, then, really lie in the MAGA-approved view that Talarico doesn’t count as a Real Man, while Paxton somehow does.Mangubat, the daughter of two Filipino immigrants, tells me she was born in Louisiana and raised in Arizona. She said Katie Miller’s claims about her being an unhappy liberal are false. “I feel very blessed in my life,” Mangubat said. “I love this country.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday pushed back against a statement from a U.S. military official that the Iran war has delayed a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told senators last week that the U.S. was holding off on the deal in order to preserve America’s dwindling munitions stockpiles. …
Many people argue they have been pulled over for bogus or petty reasons, but how many can say they’ve been clocked for something that is literally impossible? […]
Social media critics were not quite ready to accept White House claims of President Donald Trump’s “excellent health” this weekend.Citing the results of a recent examination, a Friday memo from Trump’s physician Dr. Sean Barbabella asserted that Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.”To some, the news came as a surprise considering Trump is the oldest person ever elected to the White House, with his 80th birthday arriving in June. To others, the claim was outright comedy.“I would seriously doubt the rest of any report that still claims he’s 6’3” 238lbs,” said one critic on Bluesky.“Did the North Korean propaganda team write this for him?” said another Bluesky user, referring to Trump’s history of nodding off in public, his late-night screeds and other obvious signs of pulmonary illness, including apparent tissue swelling of the ankles. CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner described the severe edema in his ankles as Chronic Venous Insufficiency, despite a White House statement just three months before that he had no edema.“If you believe those blood pressure numbers, you’re a fool lol,” howled one critic on X.Other Trump critics are seeing the rashes on his skin and severe bruising on his extremities and declaring that the president is rotting away as the public watches.“Trump is decaying, both in body and popularity,” said Left Hook podcaster Wajahat Ali. “The nearly 80-year-old vulgarian is a diminished man with historically low favorability ratings. He has dragged the GOP down with him. His actions are more reflective of a paranoid, weak King who knows his end is near and is desperately trying to sandbag against the vengeful wave that is about to topple his kingdom.”After President Donald Trump completed a medical exam at Walter Reed on Tuesday, he posted on Truth Social that declare that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.” But NBC News medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta said there are lingering issues with Trump that just aren’t adding up, particularly regarding his inflamed skin and lingering rashes.“To use a medical terminology, is there a bleeding diathesis [indicated by hand bruises] … impairing his blood's ability to properly form clots and is there a predisposition to bleeding,” Gupta said. “They claim that it is high-dose aspirin that's causing this, which, again, doesn't pass the sniff test.”Social media hecklers apparently agree.“They released this thing at 11pm on a Friday night, and it's a piecemeal mess that leaves out a vast amount of detail from the many specialists he's seeing,” said a critic on X. “He's 80. His cankles are huge, he falls asleep all the time, and he sounds like a maniac.”
The former superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district who was arrested last year in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.
