Nick shirley

Friday

Cockburn

Five suggestions for new 60 Minutes hosts

Starting a new job is never easy, but Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, has had an extra rough first two weeks after firing veteran correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday. Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker released a joint memo today condemning the firings but declaring their intention to remain in post. CBS’s management has been accused of ignoring the demands of the (dwindling) core viewership and making top-down political changes to drag the station’s coverage to the right. In that spirit, Cockburn is offering Bilton some suggestions of feet to fill Pelley’s shoes. Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe to receive new posts and support his work.

cbs 60 minutes

Thursday

Blake Neff

The unfathomable depths of blue-state fraud

“The Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception,” said Donald Trump in his State of the Union address last night, as the Democrats booed and heckled him. Media commentators scoffed at Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. But the President, who estimated that $19 billion had been lost to fraud in Minnesota alone, is if anything underplaying the scale of the problem. The extent of fraud across blue state (that is, Democrat-led) America is truly monstrous, and each week brings fresh revelations of swindling on a truly epic scale.

fraud

Friday

Bill Glahn

2026 is the year of the Somali benefits scandal

All it took was one video from a 23-year-old YouTuber named Nick Shirley to end the 20-year political run of Minnesota’s Tim Walz. Shirley brought his camera to Minneapolis in search of childcare center fraud in a video seen by over a 100 million viewers worldwide – and appeared to find plenty.But, if you thought (or had hoped) that you’ve heard the last from the multi-billion-dollar Minnesota welfare fraud scandals, think again – the issue will remain in the national spotlight throughout 2026. The most prominent date is November 3 – Election Day. Gov. Walz himself, the 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, will not be on the ballot, as he withdrew his bid on Monday morning.

Tim Walz