Stephen L. Miller

Through the Covid-19 pandemic any dissent from the official medical story told by the CDC, Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci would land you in detention. Other medical experts who went against the recommendations, no matter how they were being presented, found themselves censored by the government, demonetized by social media platforms and vilified by their colleagues. This did enormous damage to the idea of “expertise.” We are still coming to grips with the effects of Joe Biden’s office’s announcement this past Sunday that the former president had just been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer. The revelation grabbed the attention of not only the usual political and media pundits, but of medical professionals as well.

In his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama praised American innovation and name-checked Tesla. “There are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn't even exist 10 or 20 years ago. Jobs at companies like Google, and eBay and Tesla,” he said.  “So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America.”Well the future is here, ten years later, and those innovative electric vehicles are being vandalized, their drivers accosted, and there are even domestic terror attacks on dealerships, with several reports of mass arson, threats and damage at several dealerships across the country.

The parade of books about the behind-the-scenes palace intrigue of Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical decline is in full-swing. And most are being written by journalists from the very news outlets who helped cover it all up – or at least didn’t go out of their way to question Biden’s obvious decline before the June 27 debate made it impossible for them to do so. Excerpts of a new book by the Hill correspondent Amie Barnes and NBC political reporter Jonathan Allen were released this week. The upcoming tell-all titled Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House has further details about Biden missing briefings after sitting through cosmetic make-up sessions to Michael-Jacksonize his appearance.

Bill Burr has built a successful stand-up comedy and film career on being the cranky scold next door – and his acts have always been tinged with the politics of the moment. He built his reputation as an expert on reading a room and knowing exactly how uncomfortable to make the people in said room while also making them laugh.Beginning some time last year, however, Burr’s act started to risk taking a backseat to his media armchair-political scolding, whether it’s Israel, Ben Shapiro or now Elon Musk. It’s one thing to work material about any of those topics into a stand-up routine, as Burr has done with Israel, when he spoke about “launching missiles at people using kids as human shields.

Joy Reid was apparently just too moderate for what media reporters are calling a “hard-left” shift at MSNBC, terminating both Reid and Rachel Maddow fill-in host Alex Wagner (who is married to Obama’s former White House chef), and by some reports, promoting former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki into a starring role. These moves within a national media shake-up, with Jim Acosta quitting CNN for Substack, joining former Washington Post communist Jennifer Rubin on the same platform, and now reports that Lester Holt is stepping down at NBC News. Holt famously was given that promotion after the network axed Brian Williams for a series of wartime exaggerations and fictitious personal stories.

If you grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s as a Generation Xer, you either loved or hated Tom Green. You saw him as either some pioneering prankster and innovator of the cable-news troll or an obnoxious man-child desperate for attention. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, but Green’s influence on internet culture and podcasts such as Joe Rogan’s is undeniable. But then one day it just felt like he went away, much in the same way Dave Chappelle did. And just as online streaming platforms such as Netflix threw a ton of money at Chappelle, Amazon has now done the same with Tom Green. This doesn’t, however, feel like a Tom Green comeback.

Donald Trump ended his first term in praise of Xi Jinping and China’s overall handling of a global pandemic that up-ended the world, which likely led to his opponent’s election victory over him — and now he appears to re-enter office with same kind of capitulation. It’s not a good look.Trump has attempted to insert an unconstitutional level of presidential power with an Executive Order on his first night in office by blocking the Department of Justice from enforcing a US ban on the popular Chinese spyware app, TikTok. Trump himself once called for a ban on the app, but told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night that he had never used it before.

Several high-priced journalists have begun experimenting with selling themselves instead of a corporate media brand. Chris Cillizza and Mark Halperin have both started Substack ventures without having the branding back-up of CNN or Bloomberg. The pair follow in the footsteps of Megyn Kelly, who has been enormously successful in launching her own brand. Don Lemon has been confined to social media as well.Last year, Washington Post tech reporter Taylor Lorenz left corporate media behind to create her own outlet, although I would argue her audience and branding were separate from that of the Post.

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2017, there was about a week-long news cycle between the media and White House press secretary Sean Spicer regarding the size of the inaugural crowd. The exchange was first of many pedantic battles between Spicer and the White House press corps that benefited the American public in no way whatsoever. It also launched an entire subgenre of network and publishing media incessantly focused on “fact-checking.”White House reporters such as CNN’s Jim Acosta stood on their soapboxes and declared the White House briefing room to be a sacred space of truth, where no lies or spin would be tolerated by the brave warriors in the media.

As the finger-pointing begins, and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than $1 billion in war-chest funds — and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly $488 million. That’s not a Dr. Evil typo: Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars, but actually ended up $20 million in debt. Where did the money all go? To celebrities mostly, and elaborate sets and stages. As it turns out, not all of those celebrity “activists” appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. They charged fees — and some were astronomical.

In the final month of the 2024 election, the national media existed in another solar system from the country for whom is tasked at reporting accurate, unbiased and truthful information. The final month started with Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic attempting to regurgitate their anonymously sourced “suckers and losers” hit against Trump from 2020. With the help of CNN and others, they resurfaced General John Kelly. Then they went and got their full Reich on by comparing Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally to a 1939 Nazi rally there. At said rally a comedian known for celebrity roasts made a crass joke about Puerto Rico, which blanketed the whole of national media outlets for four days.

For the past four years, the topic of who won the 2020 presidential election has been a central part of our national news cycle. It has been a favorite debate question — and several outlets, including the New York Times and CNN, continue to bludgeon Republicans over it. J.D. Vance’s elusiveness on the topic has not helped his party or his ticket — and the media will keep using the line against Republicans up until Election Day.But the national media is also engaged in a severe case of collective amnesia. When Trump soundly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, several Democrats protested his electoral certification.

Kamala Harris has spent the better part of the last week off the campaign trail and planting herself in the middle of New York City, finally making herself available to questions about what kind of president she will be. She faced one minor tough grilling while appearing on 60 Minutes and has now completed what her own campaign referred to as a media blitz, appearing all in the same day on The View, The Howard Stern Show and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — all with hosts and moderators who have declared their unwavering support for Harris.While traveling to New York, she marched toward reporters on an airport tarmac to pick a fight with Governor Ron DeSantis over a media report that he was refusing her phone calls.

What happened in Brazil this past week — a magistrate suspended Twitter and threatened telecommunication companies, as well as Apple and Google — did not happen in a vacuum. To briefly sum up the order handed down: Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered that Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) be completely de-platformed, citing government speech rules against hate and “disinformation.” Any Brazilian citizen caught using a VPN to skirt the legal order could face fines that equal about $9,000. Moraes has also attempted to freeze Starlink accounts in the country, Musk’s satellite and internet service. What is happening in Brazil is a blueprint for a Kamala Harris Department of Justice to target X and Musk here in the United States. How do we know this?

The last time the country saw Kamala Harris give a meaningful live interview, she was sent out as cannon fodder to clean up Joe Biden’s disastrous debate night. She has yet to explain to the country which she is hoping to govern, in any capacity, what she knew beforehand of Biden’s clear cognitive decline due to age or some other undisclosed ailment. That is the kind of question she should have to answer when she speaks to the media… but don’t expect that, or much else, when she sits for a tag-team interview with her running mate Governor Tim Walz tonight. The entire point of being interviewed as a pair is to blunt and neutralize any remotely tough or revealing question with which CNN’s Dana Bash might present them.

This time last week, America’s media was excruciatingly examining Joe Biden’s current health condition and fading campaign to Donald Trump, with leaks coming from White House and campaign Zoom calls. George Clooney, after hosting a Biden fundraiser, called for Biden to withdraw in the pages of the New York Times. Reports of a mysterious Covid diagnosis followed. But when Biden’s Twitter/X account posted his withdrawal letter on Sunday, the story instantly turned to Vice President Kamala Harris, a presumptive nominee in-waiting who has received more New York Times fluff profiles than she has primary votes (that number is zero, by the way). The media has dug a hole in the woods for Joe Biden.

Within twenty-four hours of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, several outlets were calling on his fellow Republicans to tone down their violent rhetoric. On ABC’s morning show, Martha Raddatz and George Stephanopoulos cited what they called “conspiracy theories going forward” and stated that “President Trump and his supporters have contributed to this rhetoric as well.” On CBS, Margaret Brennan grilled Steve Scalise, who himself narrowly survived the Alexandria, Virginia softball field mass shooting by a Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer.

From almost the outset of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, everyone — from his family to close aides to the White House comms shop — has engaged in careful stagecraft and clever editing to hide him away from the public. It’s all coming out now, though, thanks to Biden’s catastrophic debate performance that laid bare whatever condition he is suffering from for the entire country to see.Every carefully orchestrated step the White House took to shield Biden is now coming under a microscope. Whether it’s the president’s tire-tread tennis shoes, or using the small stairs on Air Force One — these tactics are just the beginning. Last February, the White House pulled out of a live Super Bowl interview, claiming it would not serve Biden to speak to that audience.