During NBC’s recap of the week’s headlines on Saturday’s installment of Today, Joe Fryer hyped President Joe Biden’s “warning about the future” of an oligarchy under incoming President Donald Trump. However, Fryer, like his ABC and CBS network counterparts, ignored Biden’s Friday claim that he could amend the Constitution by simply issuing a declaration and posting it on social media.

On Today’s anchor couch, Fryer introduced the weekly recap, “Among the major headlines this week, one last major speech from the Oval Office before President Biden puts his political career behind him.”

 

 

In a voiceover, he continued, “President Biden gave a farewell address after five decades in politics, both touting his accomplishments.”

A clip then showed Biden declaring that “Every day I’ve kept my commitment to be president for all Americans for one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” with Fryer adding, “And issuing a warning about the future.”

Biden was also shown claiming that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.”

Fryer quickly moved on, but not only did Biden’s concern about oligarchy come across as partisan given Democrats’ own cozy relationship with several billionaires, but it left out Biden’s claim that the Equal Rights Amendment is now, for all intents and purposes, the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Today I’m affirming what I have long believed and what three-fourths of the states have ratified:
The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex. pic.twitter.com/oZtS6Q89zG
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 17, 2025
 

In order to become part of the Constitution, an amendment must be passed by three-fourths of the states and in 2020, Virginia passed the ERA to put it over the top or so Biden says. In reality, the archivist of the United States, who is the one actually responsible for formally acknowledging new amendments, cited Joe Biden’s own Justice Department back in December when she declared that proponents of the ERA had missed the ratification deadline. Before she died, progressive feminist hero, former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed. The ERA was first proposed in 1972 and some states have even rescinded their approval.

If Donald Trump had declared the Constitution amended through a mere proclamation, the media would say it affirmed all their warnings about him and the future of democracy and our institutions. Joe Biden actually did it, and the three main networks have nothing to say about it.

Here is a transcript for the January 18 show:

NBC Today

1/18/2025

7:21 AM ET

JOE FRYER: Among the major headlines this week, one last major speech from the Oval Office before President Biden puts his political career behind him. 

[voiceover] President Biden gave a farewell address after five decades in politics, both touting his accomplishments.

JOE BIDEN: Every day I’ve kept my commitment to be president for all Americans for one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history.

FRYER: And issuing a warning about the future.

BIDEN: An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.

During the Biden era’s final installment of Brooks and Capehart on Friday’s PBS News Hour, Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart sought to rebut New York Times columnist David Brooks’s assertion that Donald Trump’s election shows Joe Biden failed to protect democracy. Instead, Capehart argued it was the voters who “gave up on democracy” and wanted to “try this authoritarianism.”

Brooks had been making a decent point on how Biden had omitted that most billionaires support Democrats during his speech about how Trump has formed an “oligarchy.” However, he then moved onto what he considered Biden’s legacy, “The thing about Biden is, we go around the country, we have followed him for decades now. He’s done a wonderful job over the course of his career, just a wonderful job. And I go around the country in New York State or Ohio, and there are manufacturing jobs coming back.”

 

 

Whatever success Biden supposedly had on the economy pales in comparison, Brooks argued, to his failure to prevent Trumps’s return to presidency, “But as Frank Foer wrote in The Atlantic today, his job was to end — to fight authoritarianism. The whole thing was to preserve democracy. And the election of Donald Trump suggested to some large degree he failed at that large mission. And so, at some sense, a wonderful guy, he’s been a great public service, but there’s a sadness and a tragedy at the end of it.”

Capehart did not want to blame Biden; instead, he attacked the voters for not listening:

I don’t know if it’s so much that he failed, because he did try. And lots of people criticized him for talking about it, including those of — some of us in the media. But I go back to a question that I asked, I believe around the table when we were here for the marathon election night coverage, that I just wonder if, with these results, the American people just sort of gave up on democracy, or wanting to, hey, let’s try this authoritarianism, this guy who has told us what he wants to do. Let’s give that a shot. That’s the thing that concerns me the most.

Or, perhaps, the voters did not feel whatever success Brooks was talking about and voted accordingly while viewing Capehart-like warnings about authoritarianism as typical political mudslinging. There will be another presidential election in 2028, but don’t expect Capehart to admit he was wrong when it rolls around.

Here is a transcript for the January 17 show:

PBS News Hour

1/17/2025

7:44 PM ET

DAVID BROOKS: The thing about Biden is, we go around the country, we have followed him for decades now. He’s done a wonderful job over the course of his career, just a wonderful job. And I go around the country in New York State or Ohio, and there are manufacturing jobs coming back.

But as Frank Foer wrote in The Atlantic today, his job was to end — to fight authoritarianism. The whole thing was to preserve democracy. And the election of Donald Trump suggested to some large degree he failed at that large mission.

And so, at some sense, a wonderful guy, he’s been a great public service, but there’s a sadness and a tragedy at the end of it.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I don’t know if it’s so much that he failed, because he did try. And lots of people criticized him for talking about it, including those of — some of us in the media.

But I go back to a question that I asked, I believe around the table when we were here for the marathon election night coverage, that I just wonder if, with these results, the American people just sort of gave up on democracy, or wanting to, hey, let’s try this authoritarianism, this guy who has told us what he wants to do. Let’s give that a shot. That’s the thing that concerns me the most.

On Friday, a jury in Panama City, Florida found CNN guilty of defamation in the case of Zachary Young, who worked to rescue people from Afghanistan after America withdrew. CNN must pay $5 million in damages (not counting punitive damages). Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro has been in the courtroom to explain it all. 

It began with a story on November 11, 2021 by CNN reporter Alex Marquardt on The Lead with Jake Tapper. Tapper oozed: “As CNN’s Alex Marquardt has discovered, Afghans trying to get out of the country, face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”

“Black market” implies criminal activity, and so Young filed suit.

Finding CNN liable for defaming Young for helping corporate clients get people out of Afghanistan is a black mark on CNN. It mocks Jim Acosta’s Thursday lecture that they’re all about the “truth,” and they’re not enemies of the people, but “defenders of the people.” That’s not true for people they decide they don’t like. 

We here at NewsBusters were thrilled to see tweets praising Fondacaro’s work from Joe Concha, Larry O’Connor, Gabriella Hoffman, and Tony Kinnett, who said Nick’s reporting was “worthy of a whole sack of Pulitzers.” But then, we know the Pulitzer pickers are liberals honoring liberals, which is why we created the Bulldog Awards. Nick has been a bulldog on this case. 

We recorded this podcast before the two parties reached a settlement on punitive damages. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Panama City, FL – The defamation case brought by Navy veteran Zachary Young has left CNN permanently marked as “fake news” after his victory in court on Friday. As NewsBusters previously reported, the jury of six found CNN did defame Young, that they did it with malice, and they should be punished for it. The ruling spurred CNN to seek an undisclosed settlement. And in the wake of the trial NewsBusters was the first to speak with Young and his lead counsel Vel Freedman.

NewsBusters asked Young what he hoped CNN and the larger media industry take away from this trial:

My message is really just – it’s not vindictive, it never was. I was never trying to get revenge on CNN, but this is obviously something that’s very personal for me, and it has caused a lot of hardship for me and my family. And I wanted to make sure that it was exposed. And I hope that there was some lessons learned from it. And my real goal was to really improve the media in the U.S. and help them be able to be honest with themselves and take a look in the mirror. You know, sometimes change is not easy, sometimes it’s painful. And I think it had a good outcome in that regard.

When asked what the result of the trial meant to him, Young said: “It’s been a long three years and I got the outcome that I wanted. I wanted vindication. I wanted to show what happened. And I was able to do that. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it had a great outcome.”

 

When asked what the result of the trial meant to him, Young said: “It’s been a long three years and I got the outcome that I wanted. I wanted vindication. I wanted to show what happened. And I was able to do that. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it had a great outcome.” pic.twitter.com/UkRktN62Ym
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 18, 2025
 

Noting the lack of media attention until the trial was on going, NewsBusters informed Young of the fans he had accrued over the course of the trial. To them, he said:

I appreciate the support. I mean, that’s really part of what I wanted to do from day one, is really to expose the problem. And it’s really not a problem that’s unique to CNN or any media outlet. I think this is just something that’s need getting progressively worse over the last few decades.

“And I’m just really grateful for anyone who’s been interested enough to cover it, especially to you, being the first one,” he added.

When speaking with Freedman, about broad implication this trial will have for the media at-large, he told NewsBusters: 

In part of my closing argument, I said that this is a historic case, this is an opportunity to send a message. And I think – I hope that is the message taken. That, you know, just step back from sensationalized media, report the truth. We want to hear the truth, we want to hear the facts from our media. If you do that, the First Amendment protects you from these sort of results.

 

When speaking with Vel Freedman, lead counsel for Young, about broad implication this trial will have for the media at-large, he told NewsBusters:
“In part of my closing argument, I said that this is a historic case, this is an opportunity to send a message. And I think – I hope… pic.twitter.com/vT6rOnIVI4
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 18, 2025
 

In a statement, CNN said: 

We remain proud of our journalists and are 100% committed to strong, fearless and fair-minded reporting at CNN, though we will of course take what useful lessons we can from this case.

In reality, CNN put multiple reporters and editors on the stand that refused to apologize, opposed the “disingenuous apology” (to quote a juror) CNN issued, and promised to do it again.

This is forever true: CNN’s Jake Tapper, Alex Marquardt, and Katie Bo Lillis defamed Zachary Young.

Former conservative reporter-turned-liberal-media apologist Oliver Darcy spent the last few days leaking out news from his former employer about a new direction for the TV side of CNN that, while not radical in changing its liberal ideology, would be radical in personnel movement with Wolf Blitzer poised to host mornings and Jim Acosta being banished to midnight Eastern.

In a year that’s slated to include hundreds of layoffs for the network whose ratings have cratered in recent years and accelerated after Election Day, Darcy said in his Status website Wednesday that the 76-year-old Blitzer has a new contract and would team with 11:00 a.m. Eastern hour CNN Newsroom host Pamela Brown for a two-hour show from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

It’s unclear what its title would be and if Blitzer’s long-running, early-evening show title of The Situation Room would survive. Blitzer — who’s arguably the single most recognizable CNN anchor or even personality of all time — has had that show since 2005 and been with the network since 1990.

The other major headline came Thursday night as Darcy shared Acosta “received a peculiar telephone call from CNN chief Mark Thompson” on “early Wednesday night” with what he described as “a sudden and strange proposal” of “move your show” from weekdays at 10:00 a.m. Eastern “to midnight and anchor it until 2am ET.”

Yes, dear readers, Thompson wants to keep Fake News Jim on the sinking ship that is CNN, but stash him away in what Darcy dubbed the “Siberia of television news,” seen live only by cogent west-coast viewers, those stuck abroad with CNN as one of the lone English-language channels in your hotel room, and news junkies unable to sleep.

Fitting considering this was what Acosta was up to on Thursday. Perhaps it was an act of defiance and middle finger to his bosses!

Regardless, Darcy clearly spoke with either Acosta on background or someone close to him. Needless to say, the insufferable cartoon character isn’t happy (click “expand):

The offer caught Acosta off guard. He had no reason to believe that his current show would be on the chopping block. In fact, his ratings have historically been some of the network’s strongest, both when he was anchoring on the weekends and now at 10am during the weekdays. On some days, Acosta even out-rates some of CNN’s prime time programs. So why force him to move his show to the 12am hour, a time slot occupied by virtually zero other hosts in the cable news business? The move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news. He’d be manning down a shift when much of the country is fast asleep and viewership is at its lowest.

Darcy cynically chalked it up to Thompson “curry[ing] favor with Donald Trump, who very much despises the CNN anchor” and cited a “media executive” as believing this will be a peace offering or “throw[ing] a bone” to Trump.”

The official reasoning, Darcy suggested, would be someone’s hour had to be sacrificed to make room for the new, two-hour show with Blitzer and Brown and still keep CNN News Central — which currently is helmed by John Berman, Kate Bolduan, and Sara Sidner.

The midnight Eastern hour having live programming wouldn’t be unprecedented. In 2015, the network made an attempt with CNN Newsroom Live from LA, anchored by John Vause and Isha Sesay.

A more minor change considered is another promotion for Kasie Hunt to take the 4:00 p.m. Eastern hour and bump Jake Tapper’s The Lead from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

It’d be ironic for Hunt as she was originally brought to CNN in August 2021 following eight years at NBC and MSNBC to host her own show in that very hour….on CNN+ (and we all know how that turned out).

With CNN+ having been aborted after just 30 days in spring 2022, Hunt remained chief national affairs analyst and fill-in host and took over Early Start in August 2023. By February 2024, her show assumed the CNN This Morning title following the morning news debacle that was the trio of Don Lemon, Kaitlan Collins, and Poppy Harlow (and briefly resuscitated by Harlow and Phil Mattingly).

As for who’d take Hunt’s two hours, Darcy’s speculation would be one of former NPR host (Hunt’s fellow CNN+ refugees) Audie Cornish and CNN International host Rahel Solomon.

CNN host Fareed Zakaria tried to claim (a) Bidenomics was mind-boggling genius, and also (b) white working-class voters hated it and rejected it in November. So forget those unwashed, uneducated white voters. Democrats should stop trying for those voters and stick to college-educated women and minorities.

The host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS bellowed in a January17 op-ed for The Washington Post that Biden’s spendthrift economic catastrophe was actually “a resounding success.” But, alas, as Zakaria lectured in his ridiculous headline, “Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying.”

Of course, Zakaria’s idea of Biden’s “success” was no different from the same tired list of factual obfuscations the media have been peddling lately, which obscure the damning context that ends up condemning Biden’s supposedly “working-class”-engineered policies for the economic wrecking machines they actually were. But, given the election results, snorted Zakaria, “Perhaps [Democrats] should lean into their new base and shape a policy agenda around them, rather than pining for the working class Whites whom they lost decades ago.”  

Wow, talk about verbal diarrhea from an elitist snob looking down his nose at everybody else, which makes sense given that Zakaria is worth about $14 million.

In Zakaria’s world, Democrats should just quit trying to court the working class voters from a “bygone era” and instead focus on the “advantages” they already have in their bag. “[Democrats]  have a solid base of college-educated professionals, women and minorities. Many of the swing voters who have helped them win the popular vote in seven of the past nine presidential elections are registered independents and suburbanites.”

Zakaria’s asinine theory for the dramatic shift of the blue collared base abandoning the Democrats over the years included — you guessed it: racism:

There is an alternative theory that I would propose. Ever since the Democratic Party embraced civil rights in the 1960s, it has been slowly losing the votes of the White working class, largely on issues related to race, identity and culture, [emphasis added].

No, you didn’t misread that.

As bad as Zakaria’s take was, it was compounded by his misleading spewage of White House talking points to bolster his argument that Bidenomics was the best thing since sliced bread. “Entering office as the pandemic still raged, he presided over the creation of almost 17 million jobs with inflation nearing the Fed’s 2 percent target. Productivity is up, wage inequality is down, small business formation is at record levels and wage growth is outpacing inflation,” Zakaria claimed.

FactCheck.org and Snopes — two leftist fact-checkers — didn’t even let Biden get away with inflating his record on jobs, as Zakaria did. In fact, FactCheck.org tossed a bucket of water on the “17 million” talking point just a day before Zakaria’s piece went live. “But much of that job growth under Biden was due to jobs regained after millions of American jobs were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic,” FactCheck.org noted.

Last year, when Biden and his acolytes were trotting out a “15 million” jobs created figure, Snopes slapped that down too. Anna Rascouët-Paz, the author of the fact-check, addressed the Biden propaganda on her personal Twitter account: “Did the US economy really add 15 million jobs under Biden? *squinty face* mmmm let’s not push it.” No kidding.

Of course, Zakaria also didn’t mention anywhere that there was a “widespread labor shortage” as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce disclosed Dec. 13.

Second, the inflation situation is not as rosy as Zakaria made it appear, to say the very least. In fact, overall inflation surged back to 2.9 percent in December from 2.7 percent in November. In addition, consumer prices are now 21 percent higher on average than when Biden first took office. Also, Zakaria’s statement on wage growth outpacing inflation is grossly misleading. Even The Associated Press conceded in its Jan. 14 propaganda piece promoting Bidenomics that “consumer prices rose a combined 20.8% during the course of Biden’s presidency, but people’s average weekly earnings rose just 17.4% over the same period.” Oops. 

Lastly, Zakaria’s celebration of “small business formation” under Biden is also wildly off the mark. Just two days before Zakaria’s piece was published, Fox Business reported on a new study from digital lender Biz2Credit, which the outlet said showed how “[t]he backbone of the U.S. economy – the American small business – may be breaking beyond repair without some serious intervention.” Specifically, Fox Business reported, “Data from the study was pulled from more than 100,000 financing applications submitted to Biz2Credit between January 2022 and December 2024, and it shows a sharp decline in the earnings of small businesses toward the end of 2024, a trend the lender sees continuing into 2025.”

Your math isn’t mathing, Zakaria.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against communist Chinese government-tied TikTok, meaning a ban takes effect on Jan. 19. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has his own ideas for the platform.

In a per curiam decision Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against TikTok. The Court upheld a bill passed by Congress last year that gave TikTok an ultimatum: divest from Chinese ownership or be banned from the U.S. The Court also rejected the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling that TikTok is entitled to Section 230 immunity as a publisher. MRC Vice President Dan Schneider particularly praised the three justices who have consistently ruled on the side of First Amendment rights. “I thank G-d for Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch who consistently stand for free speech rights,” Schneider posted on X. President-elect Donald Trump, however, indicated that a new development could be coming soon.

Read the full blog on MRC Free Speech America’s site.

New York Times Berlin bureau chief Katrin Bennhold made Tuesday’s front page with a “News Analysis” titled “MAGA Forces Push Message Across Europe.” Bennhold’s reporting focuses solely on the dangers of the “far right” in Germany, or at least groups and personalities which she identifies as such.

There were eleven uses of “far right” in this article, and no “far left.” This time, Bennhold’s designated villain out to disrupt the world is well-known to Americans: space entrepreneur and Trump pal Elon Musk.

For the last decade or more, Europe’s governments have been trying to resist covert influence operations from adversaries like Russia and China.

Now they have a very different challenge: Fending off overt efforts by Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement to seize territory, oust elected leaders and empower far-right causes and parties.

Even before he retakes office, Mr. Trump is making threats — perhaps serious, perhaps not — to acquire the territory of NATO allies like Canada and Denmark. And Mr. Musk, the president-elect’s biggest financial supporter, is using his social media platform X to bring the far-right Alternative for Germany party into the mainstream and smear the leaders of Britain’s center-left Labour Party.

It is not clear if Europe’s political immune system has the antibodies to defend against these new incursions.

Antibodies? If the right-wingers described illegal migrants as a virus, they would lose it.

This is not the first time a Trump ally has attempted to build a bridge with the European far right. In 2018 and 2019, the Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon held meetings with far-right politicians across Europe. But the political landscape now is very different. The governments of Germany and France have collapsed; far-right parties are on the rise in those countries, and are already in power in several others across the continent.

Bennhold blamed the resurfacing of the shamefully under-addressed rape scandals in Northern UK cities, involving “grooming gangs” of men of Pakistani-origin, on Musk working in concert with “right-wing media outlets.” She even played the Hitler card!

Germans won’t vote for the AfD just because an American billionaire asks them to. But social media is a tool that can shift public opinion, taking ideas that were once considered extreme and inserting them into the mainstream over time.

What has kept the AfD out of power despite becoming the second most popular party in the country is a national taboo against working with the far right. The memory of Hitler, who formed a coalition with centrist conservatives, has so far kept this firewall in place.

Firewall? So the right-wingers are both a virus and a fire. The laugh line came when Bennhold quotes a German politician:

But now the MAGA movement seems to be intentionally sowing discord within U.S. allies. That’s disorienting for Europeans who grew up imbibing American lessons about democracy after World War II.

“I can’t remember a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country in the history of the western democracies,” said Friedrich Merz, the leader and chancellor candidate of the center-right Christian Democrats….

Really? The British Labour Party tried to influence the U.S. election just a few months ago in support of Kamala Harris, with Labour’s Sofia Patel bragging online about sending “nearly 100” party staff to America to help Harris out.

Eventually Bennhold injected a bit of reality, though of course it was first stamped with an ideological warning label:

Millions of people in Europe are angry with the establishment, said Matthew Goodwin, a conservative author and commentator. “It’s not being orchestrated by Trump or Musk.”

Bennhold, who is hypersensitive to any moves on the right, found nice things to say about East German communism: “Eastern women, who were part of the work force and with free child care, were more emancipated than their western sisters, and proved to be more mobile than their male counterparts.”

Panama City, Florida – El viernes, un jurado de seis personas en el Tribunal del 14to Circuito de Florida en el Condado de Bay encontró a CNN responsable de la difamación del veterano de la Marina Zachary Young y determinó que tenía derecho a daños económicos y emocionales, un fallo que demostró que CNN no era digna de su apodo de “el nombre más confiable en las noticias”. También descubrieron que los reporteros de CNN habían demostrado malicia expresada, malicia real y comportamiento escandaloso, lo que abrió la puerta a una sentencia masiva por daños punitivos.

El jurado también encontró que Young tenía derecho a 4 millones de dólares en daños económicos y 1 millón de dólares en daños emocionales. También dictaminaron que CNN debería estar sujeta a daños punitivos (cuyo monto está por determinarse).

Un fallo de responsabilidad significó que el jurado había determinado que CNN había publicado el material difamatorio, que el material era “de y sobre” Young, que el material que se publicó era falso, determinó que el material falso alcanzó el nivel de difamación, que CNN fue negligente en sus informes de noticias sobre Young, y que Young había sufrido daños como resultado del material.

El informe difamatorio fue originalmente emitido en CNN The Lead with Jake Tapper el 11 de noviembre de 2021. Tapper lideró el segmento pintando una imagen de estafadores del “mercado negro” que cobraban “tarifas exorbitantes” aprovechándose de personas desesperadas:

En nuestro mundo actual, el gobierno de los Estados Unidos, la administración Biden, dice que hasta la semana pasada había ayudado a la salida de al menos 377 ciudadanos estadounidenses y 279 residentes permanentes legales de los Estados Unidos de Afganistán desde el 31 de agosto. Aún así, muchos afganos, afganos que quieren desesperadamente huir del gobierno talibán y afganos que dicen que sus vidas están en juego, se quedan atrás. Como descubrió Alex Marquardt de CNN, los afganos que intentan salir del país se enfrentan a un mercado negro lleno de promesas, exigencias de tarifas exorbitantes y ninguna garantía de seguridad o éxito.

CNN defamation case (Zachary Young v. CNN) verdict being announced by the clerk in Bay County, Florida. Follow @NickFondacaro pic.twitter.com/xBjTo2P0aA
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) January 17, 2025
El corresponsal jefe de seguridad nacional, Alex Marquardt, quien fue ascendido a ese puesto mientras la demanda aún estaba en curso, destacó a Young como el rostro de la gente que estaba “explotando” a los “afganos desesperados”:

Según afganos y activistas con los que hemos hablado, afganos desesperados están siendo explotados como ese joven, y les dicen que pueden sacarlos a ellos o a sus familias si pagan cantidades exorbitantes y a menudo imposibles. Un usuario de LinkedIn publicó mensajes con Young, donde Young decía que un automóvil a Pakistán costaría 75.000 dólares. A otro le dijo que serían 14.500 por persona para llegar a los Emiratos Árabes Unidos o Albania por otros 4.000. Precios mucho más allá del alcance de la mayoría de los afganos.

El abogado principal de Young, Vel Freedman, dijo en su cierre que el segmento de Marquardt se transmitió en 11 programas diferentes de CNN tanto a nivel nacional como en CNN International. Y, además del informe difamatorio de Marquardt, estuvo acompañado de presentadores que hacían sus propias declaraciones difamatorias sobre Young.

El jurado también encontró que CNN había obrado con malicia expresa y real. La evidencia presentada al jurado fue clara; Marquardt había enviado un mensaje a sus colegas diciéndoles que iba a “atrapar a este Zachary Young Mfucker” mientras decía que el informe iba a ser “su idiota fúnebre”. Los editores de CNN lo llamaron “mierda” y “un idiota” que tenía una “cara que podía golpear”.

Al mismo tiempo, el editor senior Tom Lumley advertía que el informe de Marquardt estaba “80% de emoción y 20% de hechos oscurecidos” y “lleno de agujeros como el queso suizo”.

El jurado también escuchó a testigo tras testigo de CNN que testificaron bajo juramento que no les gustó que CNN transmitiera una disculpa y que no creían que fuera necesaria. Todos ellos testificaron bajo juramento que seguirían publicando la historia. Cuando Freedman y el jurado le preguntaron, ninguno de ellos dijo que lo sentía.

Ahora que se confirma la cuestión de la responsabilidad de CNN, el siguiente paso será calcular los daños punitivos.

On Thursday afternoon, the great Steven Nelson of the New York Post put more meat on the bone regarding reports bumbling, fumbling, stumbling White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre barred national security advisor and spokesman John Kirby from speaking to reporters about the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal because she didn’t want arguably the only adult in the Biden team from stealing her thunder.

Nelson has been one of only a few journalists (plus Axios) to actually report on this one-sided feud with Jean-Pierre repeatedly having been allegedly loathe to work with him.

Nelson explained, that not surprisingly, it had both “[j]ournalists and aides to President Biden…seething” and that it had real world implications as Jean-Pierre’s “spotlight-stealing forced the nation to wait an extra hour to learn details of the American hostages being released, including their names[.]”

He said the move came from the top as “[n]ational security adviser Jake Sullivan personally asked for” Kirby to be the person to answer questions and went to Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, “but Jean-Pierre refused to allow it, citing her own prearranged plans to celebrate herself” and one source dubbing it “her goodbye party” and a self-proclaimed “celebration of her.”

Zients even supposedly “was intimidated by the situation” and that “Jean-Pierre has at times threatened to call in powerful allies, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, to back her up, this person said,” essentially playing the race card against her superior, given his skin color.

As we wrote at NewsBusters in our recap, Jean-Pierre provided nothing of substance about the landmark and possibly life-changing deal for the region and reporters clearly sensed it.

Nelson had more serious dirt to dish out:

An indignant journalist told The Post they spotted expensive bottles of champagne, including Veuve Clicquot, on Jean-Pierre’s West Wing desk after the briefing — apparently for a boozy staff sendoff, though the press secretary herself does not drink.  

“I thought at the last minute she would just break and say, ‘OK, fine, [Kirby] can just come at the top and he can leave, and then I can wax poetic about my time here, and then I don’t really even have to answer any questions and be grilled on anything,’” the first source said.

 “But she really wanted to make a point that the briefing room was ‘hers.’ And so that’s why she pushed so much, and in the end, she feels like she won, and I guess she kind of did.

“She looks silly, and God help her in whatever she does next, but in this personal battle that she’s had with [former White House communications chief] Anita [Dunn] and Kirby for the entirety of her time in the press briefing room, I know that she considers it a win.”

A person he called “a longtime Biden aide” lambasted the incompetent Jean-Pierre: “Not allowing actual news to be delivered…for your own ego is disgraceful.”

An anonymous White House correspondent chimed in that this was “totally unsurprising behavior from someone who was either incapable of recognizing her own shortcomings or unwilling or unable to put in the work required to overcome them.”