This is republished with permission from the author. The original can be read at Racket News, &#8220;On Escaping This Horrible Era,&#8221; <a href="https://www.racket.news/p/on-escaping-this-horrible-era">here</a>.
***
&#8220;Racket&#8221; readers may have noticed it’s quiet in here. There are three reasons, two temporary. I’ve been working on a book for two years and am in a home stretch. The second involves a breaking-type story that is a document-heavy slog, but coming.
The third is more complicated. Call it an existential pileup. When I entered journalism I filed as unimportant the fact that many of my heroes left warnings to avoid the profession. The most famous are known, like Hunter Thompson calling his profession a place where “thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs,” or Oscar Wilde saying, “journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.” Balzac said journalism was a “bottomless pit of iniquity and treachery and lies,” while Flaubert, whose “Dictionary of Received Ideas” was one of a handful of books I lugged around the world throughout my twenties, wrote in a letter to George Sand that the press is a “school of demoralization” that “dispenses with thinking.” H.L. Mencken, whom I idolized, said the newspaper was a “public organ for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1177023" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/0801896e-9b68-4ffb-a678-277c2c39e051_1114x342.jpg" alt="" width="1114" height="342" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/0801896e-9b68-4ffb-a678-277c2c39e051_1114x342.jpg 1114w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/0801896e-9b68-4ffb-a678-277c2c39e051_1114x342-300x92.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/0801896e-9b68-4ffb-a678-277c2c39e051_1114x342-1024x314.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/0801896e-9b68-4ffb-a678-277c2c39e051_1114x342-768x236.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1114px) 100vw, 1114px" /></div>
I laughed all this off once, and ignored a professor (one who’d been good to me and deserved my attention) who implored me to listen. Journalism is an easy target. Many of its harshest critics were cheerful practitioners, and even the most savage satires, like Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop,” were lovingly rendered. The best American writers revered the job, Mencken being the most obvious example. He talked of living the “life of kings,” even as he denounced newspapers as factories for mass-producing the opinions of Babbitts, jobholders, and other assorted Boobi Americani. When Thompson teed off on journalism, it was usually in the same breath as an admission there was no other life that allowed a person, in a snap, to go from being broke to abusing drugs in the Nevada desert on a stranger’s tab.
Now, I wonder.
A writer’s most unforgivable sin is being boring, which makes saying anything in this time period tough. Whether you’re reporting or commenting, the game is up once audiences are able to classify according to current political taxonomy. You can publish 50 words or 5,000, but what you’re producing for most audiences is a compass heading, showing where you reside on a map in relation to Donald Trump. Maybe you wanted to say something else, but the compass reading is the only thing most people care about, so that’s how the thing will be compressed, summarized, and circulated.
It’s fine if you find talking about Donald Trump interesting, or if it’s important to you that neighbors and family receive an unambiguous signal about where you’d like to place yourself on the TrumpScape. You can put out a strong “against” signal in legacy media — that’s allowed — while almost any other strong statement is interpreted in the other direction.
For instance, we’ll soon come up on the 10-year anniversary of Peter Beinart’s 2017 “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/the-anti-anti-trump-right/516474/">The Anti-anti Trump Right</a>” column in The Atlantic, which defined most anything that isn’t explicit opposition to Trump as “evading the reality” and “opposing the people who oppose Trump.” Under that logic, just about anything could be dismissed as throat-clearing on the way to a refusal to Say The Required Things about Trump. This half-clever formulation arrived in sync with a large chunk of American academia electing to purge the social sciences of “objective” pursuit of knowledge, or what one Literature professor derided as the act of “<a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-literature/article-abstract/75/3/237/381959/Decolonizing-US-Comparative-Literature-The-2022?redirectedFrom=fulltext">intentionally [dissociating] their work from the political and ideological exigencies of the time</a>.”
If the challenge is to allow people to have identities independent of this scheme, then the task becomes creating work that resists taxonomy. If neither Norm Eisen nor Stephen Miller can classify a thing, and people still enjoy reading it, you’re on to something. The original thinking behind discussions about old books with Walter Kirn was to remind myself (and, hopefully, others) that we once read all sorts of things that were smart, funny, and provocative that had little to do with politics. Some things are timeless, which is why we loved them. In his recent essay, “<a href="https://www.vanderbilt.edu/principles/state-of-scholarship-report/literary-studies/gary-saul-morson/">Advocacy in Literary Studies</a>,” Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson wrote:
<blockquote>
As William Hazlitt pointed out in his essay “Why the Arts Are Not Progressive?” literature, unlike the hard sciences, does not progress. Aristotle’s Poetics is still relevant in a way that his physics is not. Any first-year physics student knows more physics than Aristotle, but no dramatist has surpassed Shakespeare. Novelists of the present have not created works as significant as War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
</blockquote>
The good professor’s essay was part of a “<a href="https://www.vanderbilt.edu/principles/state-of-scholarship-report/">State of Scholarship</a>” report formulated and promoted by the chancellors of Vanderbilt University and Washington University of St. Louis. Naturally, that report has already been denounced as a “<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/research/2026/06/10/professors-say-vanderbilt-report-misrepresents-their-work">diabolical</a>” attack on academics who are “critical of configurations of power in the Trump years.” Call it anti-anti-Trump academia; even the simple observation that “Anna Karenina” will probably always be a great book offends someone’s current politics.
This is not to say that journalism is dead or that there isn’t a point to doing interviews and leaving a record of what this weird and unhappy time was about. However, I’m beginning to appreciate those old warnings.
You know you’re operating in a dysfunctional landscape when the most influential stories of a period are set in the distant past (“Julius Caesar,” “The Crucible”) or in a fantastical other-world (“Gulliver’s Travels,” “Minority Report”). Take “The Master and Margarita.” Mikhail Bulgakov knew by the mid-1930s he’d never see his characters in print, not in Stalin’s world. He wrote partly for a hypothetical future, and partly for his sanity. In a severe totalitarian landscape, he created a story about mortality, art, love, bravery, and other timeless questions, laughing all the way. People reading that book 50 years from now won’t have a clue he wrote it in the middle of the purges, which seems like the ultimate triumph over those purges.
Of course, that’s different. I bring it up only to ask for patience as I try to find new ways to do more prosaic traditional reporting or research on this site without being dull. I have ideas, including a project where I’m looking for academic escapees who might be interested in helping dig for a thing or two. Until then, please hang in, and don’t be shy about offering suggestions. If you want me to visit an event, I’m now more able to do that. I just don’t want to play the binary game. The whole country can’t be the same desert. Can’t we find new worlds to explore?
***
Matt Taibbi is a journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and creator of <a href="https://www.racket.news/">Racket News</a> on Substack.

Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital

Anti-Anti-Trump Politics Swallowed The World

academia

donald trump

journalism

media

opinion

peter beinart

Clay Travis built one sports media powerhouse. Now he’s launching another and bringing it to The Daily Wire.
Just three weeks after launching <a href="https://sportandstate.com/">Sport &amp; State</a>, a digital sports and culture network, Travis is teaming up with Ben Shapiro’s conservative news site to put the new platform in front of the company’s massive audience of more than 25 million. 
And it’s not just the written content making the jump.
Under the partnership, Sport &amp; State’s sports coverage will be featured on <a href="http://dailywire.com/">DailyWire.com</a>, while “The Clay Travis &amp; Buck Sexton Show” will soon be available for subscribers to stream across Daily Wire platforms. Sport &amp; State will also receive featured placement throughout those platforms, and audiences can expect future collaborations and appearances involving talent from both companies.
The deal gives Sport &amp; State immediate national distribution while adding a daily sports franchise to The Daily Wire&#8217;s programming. Travis, who founded OutKick before Fox acquired the company, also co-hosts &#8220;The Clay Travis &amp; Buck Sexton Show,&#8221; which reaches 7 million listeners across 550 stations in all 50 states.
“Clay Travis is one of the most talented in the industry at capturing an audience and building a brand,” Daily Wire CEO Mike Richards said. “We are building a coalition of smart and interesting commentators at the Daily Wire that will bring our audience sophisticated sports, culture, and political commentary — Clay has blended all three at Sport &amp; State.”
“This was a natural fit and a partnership that we are really excited to bring to our audience at the Daily Wire,” Richards added.
Travis said the partnership will help Sport &amp; State expand its reach among conservative Americans.
“We are looking to rapidly expand Sport &amp; State and get our content in front of as many patriotic Americans as we can,” Travis said. “The guys over at Daily Wire have been friends of mine for a long time, and I think this new venture is a perfect fit for collaboration.”
“We have missionally aligned companies, so I am confident their audience is going to thoroughly enjoy what we are building at Sport &amp; State,” he added.
The Daily Wire plans to celebrate the partnership at its BaRNC event in Dallas during this week’s historic Republican National Convention.
The Sport &amp; State deal comes as The Daily Wire continues expanding its programming beyond the news. The company just launched its new Sunday show, “The District Club,” and will premiere “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” on September 16. The ’80s-style action thriller centers on radical Islamist terrorists who seize a college campus.

clay and ben

‘Sport & State’: Clay Travis Brings His Playbook To The Daily Wire

business

clay travis

mike richards

sport and state

the daily wire

WASHINGTON — Friends and colleagues on Thursday praised White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who will depart the Trump administration on Friday.
The youngest White House press secretary in history, Leavitt made a name for herself through her steadfast loyalty to President Donald Trump, her curled-lip responses to legacy media from the podium, and her embrace of new media outlets at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
“It is a blessing, a privilege and honor to stand behind the White House podium,” she said Thursday morning, reflecting on her 20 months in the role. “So, whoever gets the job next is a very lucky person to work for this president at this moment in history, and I’ll be here to help every step of the way.”
Leavitt took the role at 27 years old and has been praised for a confidence and presence that many of her older predecessors lacked. Prior to each briefing, she said a prayer for strength and wisdom with her team, then strode through the lower press door, flashing a big, camera-ready smile. She maintained that smile through much of the briefings, doing her best to call on each reporter by name.
<div id="attachment_1167103" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/karoline-leavitt-departs-trump-white-house-to-praise-and-gratitude/president-trump-departs-the-white-house-for-pittsburgh-5" rel="attachment wp-att-1167103"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1167103" class="wp-image-1167103 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2225249320-1-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2225249320-1-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2225249320-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2225249320-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2225249320-1.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></a>White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)</div>
Many of the reporters asking questions in those high-profile briefings were unable to cross the threshold of the James Brady Briefing Room during past administrations. Under Leavitt&#8217;s watch, the White House opened up the briefings to &#8220;new media&#8221; — conservative reporters, podcasters, influencers, and other non-traditional forms of media that had become prominent during the 2024 election.
“It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere,&#8221; she told the press in January 2025. Thanks to this effort, The Daily Wire has been able to attend countless briefings and Oval Office gaggles, travel on Air Force One and Air Force Two, and even gain a seat in the briefing room.
Leavitt typically remained poised and calm during briefings, sharing updates from the president and promising reporters she would check with Trump when she didn&#8217;t know the answer to their questions. Often she was humorous with the press: “It’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now,&#8221; she joked during one briefing.
But she could occasionally be biting.
“You’re a left-wing hack,&#8221; she <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2011874658694676942">fiercely told one offender</a> in January 2026. &#8220;You’re not a reporter. You’re posing in this room as a journalist&#8230; You and the people in the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist — you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat.”
“We are not going to be lectured about national security and American troops by Democrats and the mainstream media, who turned the other cheek when the Biden Administration, because of their incompetence, left 13 service members dead in Afghanistan and not a single person in the previous Administration was held accountable,&#8221; she said sternly on another occasion.
<div id="attachment_1167107" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/karoline-leavitt-departs-trump-white-house-to-praise-and-gratitude/white-house-press-secretary-karoline-leavitt-speaks-to-the-media" rel="attachment wp-att-1167107"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1167107" class="wp-image-1167107 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2246387169.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2246387169.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2246387169-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2246387169-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2246387169-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Leavitt in November 2025 (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)</div>
When she first took the podium in January 2025, she was a mother with a son, Niko, about six months old. Even before she began the White House role, Leavitt was working for Trump on the campaign, jumping back on television four days after she gave birth in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. She gave birth to her second child, a baby daughter, in May of this year, and said that she is departing the administration to focus more on her role as a wife and mother.
Speaking to The Daily Wire ahead of Mother&#8217;s Day in 2025, Leavitt <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/on-being-a-mom-at-the-white-house">reflected on the sacrifices</a> that the mothers in the administration were making to support the president. Her job was the opportunity of a lifetime, she said, and it was a temporary position.
&#8220;President Trump is only going to be here for four years, and this is a historic moment in history,&#8221; she told The Daily Wire at the time. &#8220;I work for a president whom I truly believe in and know that his policies are making a difference.”
When she wasn&#8217;t preparing for briefings or defending the president on television, Leavitt was quietly fielding questions from reporters, persuading them on framing, and overseeing a communications team that has operated far more smoothly than Trump&#8217;s first administration could ever have dreamed. She was up at 5 a.m. every day, immediately reading the news and catching up on whatever the president had posted overnight, preparing herself to take on the news media once again.
She did her best to spend time with her son Niko before she headed to the White House and sought to get home in time for dinner.
“I do really try to prioritize returning home for bedtime,” she shared in May 2025 with The Daily Wire. “I savor that time — eating dinner together, doing tubby, doing book time, and then putting him down every night is a priority for me.”
<div id="attachment_1167117" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/karoline-leavitt-departs-trump-white-house-to-praise-and-gratitude/president-trump-hosts-white-house-easter-egg-roll" rel="attachment wp-att-1167117"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1167117" class="wp-image-1167117 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2269572140.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2269572140.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2269572140-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2269572140-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/GettyImages-2269572140-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Leavitt carries her son during the 2026 White House Easter Egg Roll. Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
“That’s actually advice I was given by my predecessor Sarah Sanders, who encouraged me to set that boundary. Of course it’s not possible every night,” she added. “There are national security crises, real challenges that we are working on solving every day, and so when duty calls I remain, but I do prioritize my job as a mother above anything and try to make it home.”
She will now have that opportunity to prioritize her family. Trump, who will notice her absence more than any other administration departure, said he understands.
&#8220;Are we gonna miss Karoline?&#8221; he asked reporters outside Air Force One. &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna miss her!&#8221;
He added with a smile: &#8220;She&#8217;s made that job very glamorous.&#8221;

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Karoline Leavitt Departs Trump White House To Praise And Gratitude

karoline leavitt

politics

trump administration

white house press secretary

A year ago, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wapo-ordered-to-rehire-radical-hamas-defender-who-mocked-reaction-to-charlie-kirks-death?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Up+Next&amp;rowType=Up+Next&amp;title=WaPo+Ordered+To+Rehire+Radical+Hamas+Defender+Who+Mocked+Reaction+To+Charlie+Kirk%E2%80%99s+Death">Karen Attiah</a>, an untalented, narcissistic, racist, terror-sympathizing man-hater who loves the word “<a href="http://m">democracy</a>” more than life itself, was fired from her job as an opinion writer at The Washington Post. Her crimes against journalism? Lying, failing basic standards of accuracy, and posting egregious commentary about Charlie Kirk within hours of his assassination.
This week, after a year-long public tantrum, a private arbitrator forced the Post to take her back. Like a bad ex blackmailing you into getting back together.
Democracy Lives On…in the forced rehire of every Bluesky Karen who cannot accurately quote a dead man. On September 10, 2025, the same day Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of thousands, Attiah posted this:
“Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot”. &#8211; <a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!db2o!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1e3c8f1-c515-4afa-9dd6-2d808ad9d2ee_1198x346.png">Charlie Kirk</a>
Kirk was not, of course, speaking about all black women. He was responding on a live show to Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, discussing their own affirmative-action status. He played the clip of Sheila Jackson Lee declaring from the House floor:
<blockquote>I rise today, as a clear recipient of affirmative action…particularly in higher education. I may have been admitted on affirmative action both in terms of being a woman, and a woman of color&#8230;</blockquote>
Kirk’s apt reply: “We know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person&#8217;s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
He was correct. Sheila Jackson Lee spent nearly 30 years as the low-competence representative for Texas’ 18th district (cough term limits cough) while compiling an impressive résumé of public gaffes. She confused Mars with the Moon. She announced that “today we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South.” She claimed the Constitution is 400 years old. And in 2024, she informed high school students that the Moon is a planet “made up mostly of gases.” Somehow, this woman graduated from both Yale and the University of Virginia School of Law, where she obviously did not study the solar system.
But who has time for journalistic integrity these days? It’s far easier to ignore reality, post absurdly racist and defamatory misquotes, and then collapse into victimhood the moment consequences appear. Attiah used her vast brain-processing power to suggest Kirk was a violent white man, call the United States a “sick” country that “worships violence,” express solidarity with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wapo-columnist-celebrates-anti-jew-terrorism-as-exactly-what-decolonization-means">Hamas</a> terrorists who murder Israeli civilians, threaten <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wapo-editor-white-women-lucky-were-not-calling-for-revenge">revenge</a> against white women, and lament that white America refuses to get rid of their guns while suggesting we <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/25/lgbtq-culture-wars-laura-ann-carleton/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=wp_opinions&amp;utm_medium=social">arm the gays</a>. Because in her moral universe, selective political violence is practically a civil duty.
Speaking of violence, Karen Attiah wakes up and chooses it against men every day. She simply prefers to channel her white-male rage in the gym rather than in more creative outlets <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/shorts/85edf547-5650-4079-ad71-df022690f2bd?elementPosition=3&amp;row=10&amp;rowHeadline=Trending+Shorts&amp;rowType=Shorts+Carousel">such as the bathtub</a>, once <a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/karen-attiah-fitness.jpg">writing</a> that her fitness goals included “building legs strong enough to crush men’s hopes and dreams.”
It’s a wonder she’s forty and still single.
Apparently, that was the bulk of her brilliant output. Following her firing, a Post staffer anonymously <a href="https://freebeacon.com/media/wapo-fires-karen-attiah-radical-beefcake-columnist-who-praised-hamas/">observed</a> that “Karen Attiah wrote two columns in the last three months, and one was about her body-building regimen. I think the Post will be OK.” Speak for yourself, Anon. This past year has been terribly difficult for us body-building gurus who relied on the motivational mantras of Miss Crush-Men Karen in the opinion section of a political newspaper.
The most revealing part of this entire saga is the pure, distilled hypocrisy of how she handled her own termination. She was fired for a clear pattern of racist and hateful posts made in the hours after a public assassination; posts that generalized, distorted, and celebrated the dehumanization of a man who had just been murdered in front of the world. And under the leadership of a new, sane, and competent editor, Adam O’Neal, the Washington Post treated those posts as the misconduct they were.
Yet Attiah’s response was not reflection or even a mild course correction; it was victimhood word vomit. She immediately framed the firing itself as an act of racism and hate directed at her. In her narcissistic telling, the newspaper wasn’t enforcing basic standards of accuracy and civility; it was silencing a black woman for speaking uncomfortable truths. The same person who spent years diagnosing “whiteness” as a pathology and treating political violence as selectively acceptable suddenly discovered that accountability is only legitimate when it happens to other people. She got fired for being racist and hateful…then spent the next year insisting that the firing was racist and hateful.
And so the bad ex has clawed her way back into the house through arbitration, threats, and sheer force of grievance. This particular ex is the kind who would also find a way to soft-pedal Lindsay Clancy, treat the murder of her political foes as something closer to justice than tragedy, and who still manages to keep a soft spot in her heart for Hamas.
The Washington Post is now stuck with her and a fat couples-therapy bill, and the rest of us are stuck with more unsolicited columns about getting jacked in order to attack men.
This, we are told, is democracy in action: a forced reunion between an institution that tried to set a boundary and an activist who refuses to accept that boundaries apply to her. Everyone loses. Especially the photographer who had to take this <a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/attiah-post2.jpg">picture</a> during the breakup.
<a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/attiah-post2.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1164173" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/attiah-post2.jpg" alt="" width="736" height="515" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/attiah-post2.jpg 736w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/attiah-post2-300x210.jpg 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 736px) 100vw, 736px" /></a> 
The only winner is the grievance industrial complex, which has once again proven that if you scream “racist” and “Democracy is dying” loudly enough after being held accountable for actual racism, someone in a suit will eventually hand you your job back.
When in reality, the real “death of democracy” looks more like Anthony Fauci lying to the public for years and facing zero consequences while the rest of us lived under the rules he helped to invent. It looks like Kamala Harris being coronated as the Democratic nominee without ever winning a single primary vote. It looks like pollsters and operatives spinning up fake websites and misleading data operations designed to confuse the public and nudge election outcomes. And it looks like conservative TikTokers (myself included) who can’t post a single video without it being silently removed or suppressed under the ever-shifting excuse of “violating community guidelines,” guidelines that somehow never seem to apply equally in the other direction.
That is the actual erosion. Not a newspaper being ordered to rehire one of its most deranged and morally depraved columnists. Maybe Mr. O’Neal should mandate that she write with Professor Umbridge’s blood quill — I must not tell lies — until it finally sinks in.

Hoover Institution Hosts Discussion On Jamal Khashoggi And US-Saudi Relations

The Bad Ex Who Blackmailed Her Way Back To The Washington Post

charlie kirk

karen attiah

sheila jackson lee

washington post

The Washington Post has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/business/washington-post-karen-attiah.html?unlocked_article_code=1.71A.plFf.yI_cDbktFcRd&amp;smid=url-share">ordered</a> by a private arbitrator to rehire opinion columnist Karen Attiah and hand over full back pay to the woman who issued a social media post seemingly mocking the reaction to the death of Charlie Kirk.
Attiah was booted from the paper last September after unleashing a series of jaw-dropping social media posts following Kirk’s assassination. Attiah took to Bluesky to mock the public grief surrounding the killing, writing, “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence.”
She also falsely claimed Kirk had stated, “Black women do not have the brain-processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”
Journalist Jerry Dunleavy <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/liberal-washington-post-columnist-fired-over-charlie-kirk-comments">noted</a> that Attiah’s quote was inaccurate as she implied Kirk was referring to all black women when, in reality, he was targeting former first lady Michelle Obama, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), former MSNBC host Joy Reid, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Despite Post executives having deemed her remarks &#8220;beyond the pale,&#8221; &#8220;gross misconduct,&#8221; and a breach of company standards, arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa ruled last week that the paper lacked &#8220;good and sufficient cause&#8221; to fire her, claiming the outlet violated its labor agreement, The New York Times reported on Monday.
Attiah’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wapo-columnist-celebrates-anti-jew-terrorism-as-exactly-what-decolonization-means">history of radical takes</a> stretches far beyond mocking Kirk. Back in October 2023, on the very day Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 innocent civilians in Israel, Attiah reposted rhetoric justifying terrorism, such as &#8220;what did y&#8217;all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? Losers.&#8221; She also reposted someone who stated, &#8220;All my American education taught was that all we have to do to fight brutal, racist oppression is schedule a single die-in or refuse to give up a single seat on a bus and justice automatically prevails through non-violence.&#8221;
Meanwhile, she boasted of her radical academic credentials: &#8220;I studied race construction, human rights and global anti-colonial resistance in college and grad school. Honey, we did the scholarship way before it was &#8216;cool.'&#8221;
Attiah even looked as if she were justifying raw violence by non-state actors, claiming that public opinion was shifting toward anti-Israel extremism and echoing posts that seemingly accused defenders of Israel of siding with &#8220;oppressors, murderers, thieves and political manipulators.&#8221;
Attiah celebrated the arbitrator&#8217;s ruling, calling the Post &#8220;one of the world&#8217;s most storied newspapers&#8221; and claiming she was &#8220;relieved to finally have that record set straight.&#8221;

WaPo Ordered To Rehire Radical Hamas Defender Who Mocked Reaction To Charlie Kirk’s Death

hamas

Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) unloaded on a reporter from radical outlet Drop Site News, claiming that the outlet was actively participating in a race to see who could be the most pro-Hamas.
Fetterman, when approached by a reporter in a Capitol Hill hallway, immediately asked him to identify the outlet he was representing — and upon learning that it was Julian Andreone from Drop Site News, the Pennsylvania senator immediately started questioning him about who funded them.
Andreone introduced himself, and Fetterman immediately asked, &#8220;Who are you with?&#8221;
&#8220;Drop Site News,&#8221; Andreone replied.
&#8220;Oh, you&#8217;re Drop Site!&#8221; Fetterman exclaimed. &#8220;Oh! Now it&#8217;s like a race between who&#8217;s the more pro-Hamas, Drop Site or Zeteo. So now I got both. Hi! Hi, everybody, yeah.&#8221;
&#8220;Do you mind if I ask you a question really quick?&#8221; Andreone asked. &#8220;It&#8217;s about —&#8221;
&#8220;I want your viewers to see how much I love to watch Israel eliminating the Hamas leadership,&#8221; Fetterman interrupted. &#8220;I know that upsets a lot of your viewers and a lot of your founders. But I think it&#8217;s a great thing.&#8221;
&#8220;So, President Trump —&#8221; Andreone attempted to ask a question, but Fetterman filibustered.
&#8220;So there&#8217;s no news coming out of me. I&#8217;m going to always back Israel. The question is, where does your trash outlet come from and who&#8217;s funding it? And if you think —&#8221;
&#8220;46,000 individual donors,&#8221; Andreone insisted.
&#8220;Your founders think it&#8217;s appropriate to attack and kill Israeli civilians. That&#8217;s really — that should be the news overall,&#8221; Fetterman said, referencing Drop Site News co-founder Jeremy Scahill, who recently attempted to get <a href="https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2077101764277399717">Rep. Ro Khanna</a> (D-CA) to say that the October 7 Hamas-perpetrated attacks on Israeli soldiers may have been &#8220;justified.&#8221; In addition, he argued that the Hamas attackers were specifically targeting Israeli soldiers and that civilians had only been caught in the crossfire.
Scahill also claimed at another time that it was &#8220;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DQUmws3jrGA/">journalistic malpractice</a>&#8221; for Western outlets to not seek out conversations with Hamas terrorists — to whom he refers as the &#8220;Palestinian armed resistance&#8221; — when covering conflicts in the Middle East.
&#8220;Now you&#8217;re sticking a microphone in my face,&#8221; Fetterman continued. &#8220;There&#8217;s not any news here. I think the question is why does Drop Site love Hamas and Iran and Hezbollah so much? I think that&#8217;s really, I think that&#8217;s the news. I mean, are you OK with taking your paycheck from these kind of people?&#8221;
&#8220;Are you okay with Prime Minister Netanyahu being in the United States?&#8221; Andreone tried one more time to get a question in.
&#8220;I&#8217;m okay,&#8221; Fetterman replied, and with the dramatic timing of Robert Duvall delivering the line, &#8220;I love the smell of napalm in the morning,&#8221; the Pennsylvania senator got five words in just as the elevator door closed behind him: &#8220;I love killing Hamas leadership.&#8221;

Challenges in Preserving the U.S. Housing Stock

‘I Love Killing Hamas Leadership’: Fetterman Drop-Kicks Radical News Outlet

WATCH: John Fetterman Drop-Kicks Radical Drop Site News

anti-Israel

antisemitism

john fetterman

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Singer-songwriter Noah Kahan criticized the White House after it used his song &#8220;American Cars&#8221; in a social media post highlighting President Donald Trump&#8217;s visit to a Michigan auto plant.
The White House posted a slideshow on TikTok and Instagram featuring photos from Trump&#8217;s recent visit to Michigan, using Kahan&#8217;s song from his fourth album, &#8220;The Great Divide,&#8221; as background music.
The song is available for use across several social media platforms — thanks to a 2024 deal between the Universal Music Group and Meta — but that&#8217;s not stopping Kahan and &#8220;American Cars&#8221; co-writer, guitarist Noah Levine, from complaining that the White House used it.
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&#8220;Would never approve of my music being used in support of you or this administration,&#8221; Kahan commented on the White House&#8217;s Instagram post.
Levine, according to a Billboard <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/noah-kahan-slams-white-house-unauthorized-use-american-cars-1236305033/">report</a>, also commented on the post, saying, &#8220;You fat f*ck this song isn’t for you&#8221; — but the comment appears to have been deleted.
The music has since been disabled on the White House Instagram post.
Kahan is far from the first to complain about President Trump&#8217;s use of music for either a public appearance or a social media post.
Just last week, pop star Katy Perry complained that her song &#8220;Firework&#8221; was used in a White House video of military operations in Iran.
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<section><a title="@whitehouse" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@whitehouse?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@whitehouse</a>Iran has been warned. 🎆<a title="♬ original sound - The White House" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7665732646814665486?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">♬ original sound &#8211; The White House</a></section>
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&#8220;I am deeply appalled and angry to see &#8216;Firework&#8217; used on the [White House] TikTok account as a backing track for video footage of military strikes,&#8221; Perry wrote on X. &#8220;I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it.&#8221;
&#8220;I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments,&#8221; Perry complained. &#8220;To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.&#8221;
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I am deeply appalled and angry to see “Firework” used on the <a href="https://x.com/WhiteHouse?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WhiteHouse</a> TikTok account as a backing track for video footage of military strikes. I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it.
I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and…
— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) <a href="https://x.com/katyperry/status/2081032309508047136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
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As several quickly pointed out, however, Perry&#8217;s music is also available for use on TikTok under the platform&#8217;s licensing agreements with major record labels. The White House later removed the music from that post as well.

MACY’S 4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS

A Deal Put Noah Kahan’s Music On Meta. Now He’s Mad Trump Can Use It.

Katy Perry

music

social media

If people were surprised to see Vice President JD Vance as a guest on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;The View,&#8221; that is likely because the show typically skews far to the Left — both in its regular hosts and the guests invited to join the table.
Data provided to The Daily Wire by The Media Research Center only serves to underscore that point, as a recent study conducted by the MRC revealed that &#8220;The View&#8221; booked 87 liberal guests and just five conservative guests — meaning the show booked 17.4 times more liberals than conservatives.
&#8220;&#8216;The View’s&#8217; 87-5 guest ratio proves the show is not diverse at all. It’s a Democrat Socialist Party infomercial,&#8221; MRC President David Bozell said.
The data was compiled over the course of the midday talk show&#8217;s 29th season — which ran from September 8, 2025, through July 24, 2026 — and evaluated only the guests who specifically spoke about politics in one direction or the other.
The five &#8220;conservative&#8221; guests were Cheryl Hines (wife of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), former reality star and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, attorney Alina Habba, and Vice President JD Vance.
The liberal guests — in addition to a number of celebrities who discuss political issues — included but were not limited to: New York City&#8217;s Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico (also from Texas), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), former First Lady Jill Biden, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson (on separate occasions).
It is also worth noting that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, though listed as a &#8220;conservative&#8221; guest for her appearance on November 4, 2025, also appeared on the &#8220;liberal&#8221; list for her appearances on January 1, 2026, and July 7, 2026.
According to the official stated methodology of the study, &#8220;For a guest to be counted as either liberal or conservative, they needed to express such views during their appearance on &#8216;The View.&#8217; If a celebrity did not discuss politics, they were not included in the count of political leanings even if they had a history of being outspoken in the past. For example, actor Robert De Niro had a history of speaking out against President Trump, but was not included in the liberal count because politics did not come up.&#8221;
Additionally, it was noted that &#8220;conservative&#8221; guest hosts who rotated through while Republican cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin was on maternity leave were not officially considered &#8220;guests&#8221; — nor were the regular hosts, who lean far to the Left — and were thus excluded from the reported numbers.
The study comes as reports swirl about the studio making major cuts — from wardrobe to host salaries — and the show faces an investigation from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into whether or not it qualifies as a &#8220;bona fide news program&#8221; and is thus exempt from &#8220;equal time&#8221; political broadcast requirements.
The network has argued that a 2002 ruling declaring the show a &#8220;news&#8221; program should stand, adding that &#8220;nothing about ‘The View’ that the law cares about has changed since the Commission last answered that question more than two decades ago. … What has changed is not the program but the political climate around it.&#8221;
The network also pushed back on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, complaining that his focus has been unfairly directed toward daytime and evening television programming &#8220;perceived as unfriendly to the current administration — while leaving untouched the vast landscape of talk radio, where candidates routinely appear without their opponents.&#8221;
The FCC responded to that criticism in a statement given to The Associated Press, saying, &#8220;While ABC insists that ‘The View’ is a ‘bona fide news program’ under the law, ABC should focus on complying with its public-interest obligations, rather than misleading the public about them.&#8221;

WHOOPI GOLDBERG, SARA HAINES, JOY BEHAR, SUNNY HOSTIN, ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN

EXCLUSIVE: ‘The View’ Guest List Proves It’s A ‘Democrat Socialist Party Infomercial’

'The View' Is A 'Democrat Socialist Party Infomercial' — Their Guest List Proves It

Conservatives

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democratic socialism

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CBS News unveiled its first major slate of &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; hires under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss on Tuesday, tapping New York Times columnist Ross Douthat as the network presses ahead with its overhaul of the iconic news magazine.
Executive producer Nick Bilton announced in a memo that Douthat will join the program as a correspondent, while bestselling author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger, former VICE News and CNN journalist Gianna Toboni, and British broadcaster Trevor Phillips will serve as contributors. Former CBS Evening News anchor Norah O&#8217;Donnell, who has contributed to &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; for more than a decade, has also been elevated to full correspondent.
&#8220;An exceptional lineup of journalists will be joining &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221;, carrying on its tradition of fearless, independent and impartial reporting,&#8221; Bilton wrote. &#8220;I can&#8217;t wait for them to get started.&#8221; 
The hires are the first major on-air additions since Weiss took control of CBS News and began restructuring &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; after several longtime correspondents and senior producers departed earlier this year.
Douthat joined the Times in 2009 and has become one of the paper&#8217;s best-known conservative opinion writers. Bilton praised him as &#8220;one of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy.&#8221;
Bilton also announced that Junger, the author of &#8220;The Perfect Storm&#8221; and co-director of the Oscar-nominated Afghanistan war documentary &#8220;Restrepo,&#8221; will join the program as a contributor
Toboni, whose reporting has included investigations into ISIS, Mexican cartels, mass shootings, and the death penalty, will also join as a contributor, while Phillips — recently hired as CBS News&#8217; senior global affairs correspondent — will contribute to 60 Minutes from London. 
Bilton praised the whole group as &#8220;entrepreneurial journalists who understand how to reach modern audiences.&#8221;
Earlier this year, Weiss removed longtime executive producer <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/05/28/bari-weiss-ousts-tanya-simon-60-minutes-favor-nick-bilton/">Tanya Simon</a> and several senior producers before dismissing veteran correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/longtime-60-minutes-reporter-fired-after-attacks-on-new-leadership">Scott Pelley</a>. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/celebrating-anderson-cooper-60-minutes/">Anderson Cooper</a> later departed the program voluntarily.
The personnel changes followed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/longtime-60-minutes-reporter-fired-after-attacks-on-new-leadership">years of criticism</a> that &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; had abandoned its reputation for impartial journalism, including backlash over its heavily edited 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which ultimately contributed to CBS parent company Paramount settling President Donald Trump&#8217;s lawsuit for $16 million.
Since taking over, Weiss has pledged to restore trust in the network while broadening the program&#8217;s appeal. Bilton, a former technology journalist and author who was tapped to lead &#8220;60 Minutes,&#8221; has likewise promised to modernize the nearly six-decade-old broadcast without sacrificing its journalistic standards.
&#8220;My responsibility is not just technological transformation,&#8221; Bilton previously told staff. &#8220;It is also our trust with the public. Above all, that means a commitment to fairness—in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast.&#8221;
Season 59 of &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; is scheduled to premiere September 13.

Preparations Ahead Of Vice Presidential Debate

CBS News Shakeup Continues As ’60 Minutes’ Adds New Correspondents

60 minutes

bari weiss

cbs news

Legacy Media

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Scott Pelley

The New York Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci recommended White House adviser Stephen Miller move into a hotel for two weeks after his wife, Katie Miller, tested positive for COVID-19 while 10 weeks pregnant, according to newly released diary entries.
The entries were released Saturday by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who <a href="https://www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf">obtained</a> them during his investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and gain-of-function research ahead of Fauci&#8217;s planned testimony on Capitol Hill in the coming week.
&#8220;COVID-19 hits the White House!!&#8221; Fauci wrote on May 8, 2020. &#8220;Yesterday, it was revealed that the personal valet of the POTUS tested positive for Sars-CoV-2. However, today it was noted that Katie Miller tested positive. She was negative yesterday and positive X2 today!!!&#8221;
&#8220;She had sxs (sic) in the Sit room yesterday and sat next to Steve Hahn and behind Azar,&#8221; Fauci continued, listing a number of officials who had all attended the same briefing. &#8220;I was on the other side of the room from her, but she was coughing in the room. She sat next to Olivia Troye when she was coughing and, in the afternoon, yesterday, Olivia sat right next to me in the Ward Room of the West Wing for 45 minutes. In the room were Deb Birx, Steve Hahn, Bob Redfield, Tyler Ann, Seema Verma.&#8221;
Fauci went on to note that White House adviser Stephen Miller had tested negative even after his wife had tested positive — a relief for the White House chief medical adviser because he&#8217;d spent some time in close proximity to Miller.
&#8220;I spent much time on phone this evening advising Katie and Steve Miller as to what they should do,&#8221; Fauci continued. &#8220;She is 10 weeks pregnant. I advised that Steve must move out of the house into a hotel; he still has to self-isolate for 14 days. If he stays in the house, whether or not he gets infected, he still must self-isolate for 14 days after Katies (sic) tests negative. His clock will start after he separates from Katie and so he should start the clock now.&#8221;
Fauci explained that because he was a &#8220;low risk exposure,&#8221; he self-imposed a &#8220;modified quarantine&#8221; in which he would &#8220;get tested every day, would wear a mask ontinually (sic), and would spend most of my time either alone in my home office or alone in my NIH office and would go to White House or Congress with precautions of universal mask wearing and phycial (sic) distancing.&#8221;
He also noted that he was monitoring Katie Miller via phone, noting that she&#8217;d been very anxious about her health and that of her unborn child.
&#8220;She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone. Her pulse Ox is fine and she is afebrile,&#8221; he wrote.
His other main concern was the fact that some of those who&#8217;d been seated close to Katie were not doing enough to mitigate the potential spread of the virus.
&#8220;Marc Short and others close to Katie really should do some sort of quarantine (even if modified), but they are not even wearing masks. Not a good metric,&#8221; he complained.

Stephen Miller

Fauci Advised Stephen Miller To Leave His Pregnant Wife Alone With COVID, Get A Hotel

Alex Azar

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COVID

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health

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While publicly urging Americans to avoid family gatherings and maintain &#8220;social distance,&#8221; Dr. Anthony Fauci was also busy behind the scenes cultivating a chummy friendship with CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
Fauci&#8217;s meetings and family dinners with the longtime CNN personality were revealed in a series of <a href="https://www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf">diary entries</a> made public on Saturday by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who uncovered them during his lengthy and thorough investigation into Fauci and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former White House chief medical adviser thoroughly documented his actions throughout the pandemic — with a heavy focus on his own media appearances and coverage, particularly when it was overly flattering — and referenced an interview with Tapper that took place on April 12, 2020. During that interview, Fauci conceded that Tapper had asked tough — but reasonable — questions, and then had called him directly afterward to make sure that the interview had not caused him &#8220;any problems.&#8221;
&#8220;Potential big problem (we shall see). NY Times reporting on an answer to a question that I gave on CNN yesterday (see above). Jake Tapper asked me if we had closed down earlier, whould (sic) that have saved lives. I said it is complicated; he persisted and I said obviously, if you close earlier there would have been lives saved, but the decision was complicated,&#8221; Fauci wrote. &#8220;I could have answered the question better and with more clarity, but the Times is now saying that I was implying that the POTUS was to blame for additional deaths according to me. The far right is tweeting to fire me. The POTUS even re-tweeted the tweet that said to fire me. We shall see how the day goes &#8230;&#8221;
Fauci said that he later met with President Donald Trump, who said that he did not have an issue and business continued as usual.
Of the press briefing that followed, he said, &#8220;I went out and explained that I was being hoest (sic) in my answer to Jake, but that I was not implying that anyone was responsible for more deaths &#8230; Phone call with Jake Tapper. Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.&#8221;
Later that month, Tapper spoke with Fauci about an interview he&#8217;d done with Coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx. Of that exchange, Fauci wrote, &#8220;I was not on Sunday shows. Deb was on CNN with Jake Tapper and did not answer the question of whether it was a mistake for the POTUS to talk about injecting or swallowing bleach. Jake wrote me a text afterwards and said: “Birx has lost her way I fear. She has chosen to focus on defending the president and attacking the press. Odd.&#8221;
On May 4, 2020, Fauci referenced a CNN interview in which Tapper had been hard on the Trump administration&#8217;s &#8220;inadequate&#8221; response to the pandemic — but had spared him the ire reserved for the president: &#8220;Jake Tapper did a segment last night on the inadequate response of the Trump administration to the pandemic. I came out relatively well.&#8221;
Later that month, when Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence, tested positive, and Fauci was directly exposed to SARS-CoV-2, he got a call from Tapper making sure that he was all right.
&#8220;Jake Tapper called me and asked whether I was going inot (sic) quarantine. I explained to Jake that I would do a “modified quarantine” since I was a low risk exposure to Kstie (sic). Thid merans (sic) that I will get tested every day, would wear a mask ontinually (sic), and would spend most of my time either alone in my home office or alone in my NIH office and would go to White House or Congress with precautions of universal mask wearing and phycial (sic) distancing. I tested negative yesterday and will get tested every day for 14 days and then 1 time per week,&#8221; he wrote, adding in a subsequent entry that Marc Short was not taking enough precautions.
&#8220;Marc Short (whom I resally (sic) like) practically sits on Katie’s lap and he is vey (sic) close to the VP. Yet he is not even wearing a mask. He actually should be self-quarantining. He was at a much greater risk than I.&#8221;
On July 1, Fauci mentioned a dinner with Tapper and his wife: &#8220;Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.&#8221;
By late July, Fauci was feeding questions to Tapper ahead of interviews with other officials: &#8220;Brett Giroir on Tapper (State of the Union) talking bullsh*t about testing with Jake pressing him. I gave Jake some questions to ask him.&#8221;
And Tapper was calling Fauci to complain about President Trump: &#8220;Jake Tapper woke me up at 11:23 AM (I went to bed early) furius (sic) at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severly (sic) questioned Brett Giroir on SOTU CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all.&#8221;
In later entries — into the fall of 2020, as Americans were preparing to host holiday dinners via Zoom — Fauci mentioned another dinner at the Tapper home: &#8220;Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts.&#8221;
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Tapper texts Fauci to attack Laura Ingraham and defend the integrity of Dartmouth <a href="https://t.co/pLW5c1zuja">pic.twitter.com/pLW5c1zuja</a>
— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) <a href="https://x.com/emilyjashinsky/status/2081488487337906438?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
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In a later exchange, after Fauci appeared on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham, Tapper texted to mock Ingraham, saying it was a shock that she&#8217;d graduated from Dartmouth.

Anthony Fauci

Inside Fauci’s Behind-The-Scenes Bromance With Jake Tapper

jake tapper

Mainstream Media

Dr. Anthony Fauci rejected questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and funding sent from the United States to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, saying that he was &#8220;wasting&#8221; time by addressing the concerns posed by members of Congress.
Fauci&#8217;s private thoughts were presented for public consumption when Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) — who was responsible for asking many of the aforementioned questions — published a number of diary entries he&#8217;d uncovered while investigating the former White House medical adviser.
Paul shared a lengthy thread on X, complete with screenshots of some of the most relevant diary entries, and added some of his own notes ahead of Fauci&#8217;s scheduled testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
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9/9 July 12, 2021. Fauci complains about &#8220;how many hours we are all wasting&#8221; answering letters he calls &#8220;fundamentally driven by conspiracy theories&#8221; — from senators he names, including me. 
Asking who funded the research is not a conspiracy theory. It&#8217;s oversight. <a href="https://t.co/ZgjIrsyAam">pic.twitter.com/ZgjIrsyAam</a>
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) <a href="https://x.com/SenRandPaul/status/2081093837397659942?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 25, 2026</a></blockquote>
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On July 7, 2021 — long after it was first posited in January of 2020 that a new coronavirus strain could have been leaked from the Wuhan lab, either intentionally or accidentally — Fauci wrote that he had actively encouraged members of the National Security Council to work with several &#8220;qualified&#8221;virologists to dig into the pandemic&#8217;s origins. Two of the four virologists he&#8217;d recommended to the NSC came out with a paper that same day arguing that the virus had occurred naturally.
On July 9, Fauci complained about &#8220;how many hours we are all wasting&#8221; taking questions about whether or not U.S. funding for the Wuhan lab had been used to conduct dangerous &#8220;gain-of-function&#8221; research that would have made the virus more deadly.
&#8220;It is important to point out how many hours we are all wasting in responding to the multiple letters from senators and congressmen fundamentally driven by conspiracy theories that the NIH has funded work at Wuhan institute of virology that led to SARS-CoV-2,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;For example, over the weekend I was on multiple zoom calls with my staff fine-tuning the letters in response to the multiple questions.&#8221;
He referenced Paul as one of the senators asking questions, and then voiced surprise that he&#8217;d also received questions from Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) because &#8220;he generally is a friendly person to me.&#8221;

Fauci Complains Questions About COVID Origins Were ‘Wasting’ Time

Fauci Complains Questions About COVID Origins Were 'Wasting' Time

Wuhan Institute of Virology

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