Free Republic

Days after the end of the longest shutdown in history, a new Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday finds a majority of Americans trust Democrats over President Trump on the issue at the center of the stalemate: border security. Fifty percent of registered voters say they trust Democrats in Congress to address border security, as opposed to 41 percent who said they trust Mr. Trump. The results are deeply divided along party and racial lines. Republicans trust Mr. Trump 87 to 8 percent, while Democrats trust congressional Democrats 91 to 4 percent. White voters trust Mr. Trump by 50 to 44 percent,...

“Good Morning America” recently hosted an 11-year-old “drag kid” known as “Desmond is Amazing.” Desmond Napoles made a grand entrance dressed as an adult woman and danced suggestively down a red carpet to rousing applause. Desmond finished his routine posed suggestively on the floor where he was met with more wild applause. The two hosts called him “trailblazing” and “courageous.”Desmond’s parents, Andrew and Wendy Napoles were present in the audience. They have also allowed their son to dance for money and simulate stripping in an adult gay bar in Brooklyn called “The 3 Dollar Bill.”  What causes an entire audience...

So much for the Great Right Hope in 2020. “I will not be a candidate,” former senator and now-CBS News contributor Jeff Flake announced to start his debut on CBS This Morning. Flake urged someone to run against Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, but in almost the same breath called it an impossibility:

Despite what was a much delayed but important avalanche of headlines about the group’s anti-Semitism, the 2019 Women’s March took place Saturday and it still received nearly 15 times the broadcast network newscast coverage of the 47th annual March for Life that was held Friday.  Between Wednesday morning and Saturday evening, the Women’s March fetched 14 minutes and 26 seconds of coverage on the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening newscasts. This stood in stark contrast to just 58 seconds for the March for Life. The Women’s March still went on despite their controversies with some satellite marches divorcing...

Friday night, the Special Counsel’s office released an extremely rare statement that took a buzz saw to BuzzFeed News’s Thursday night bombshell that alleged President Trump directed former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about possible construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow. In the statement, a Mueller spokesman called it “not accurate.” Despite the fact that the BuzzFeed News story was not confirmed by — well — any news outlet from when it was first published to the statement from Mueller’s team, the broadcast networks devoted 27 minutes and 33 second on their Friday morning and...

A new study by a conservative media watchdog group concludes that the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have covered President Trump with negative spin 90 percent of the time, but claims the coverage has done little to sway the public's overall opinion of his administration. Media Research Center senior editor Rich Noyes analyzed every episode of “NBC Nightly News,” ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “CBS Evening News” since Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration. Noyes noted that the “tone of coverage remains incessantly hostile” and was only positive 10 percent of the time. “To determine the spin of news coverage,...

Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Michael Bennett was caught confronting a cameraman as he was walking off the field at the end of the team’s loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. Video captured Bennett walking off the field and getting in the face of a CBS Philadelphia cameraman. It wasn’t immediately clear why Bennett was yelling at the cameraman.

Television news organizations that want to claim they are “balanced” with the views of both parties but remain critical of President Trump continue to turn to NeverTrumps. Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Ana Navarro, Meghan McCain, and Nicole Wallace are about to be joined by Jeff Flake, who didn’t even bother running for re-election to the Senate because of his unpopularity, ig the reported negotiations with CBS work out. Emily Birnbaum reports in The Hill: CBS News is engaging in talks to possibly bring on newly departed Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for a role with the network. The Hollywood Reporter reports that the former senator...

CBS' long-running series Criminal Minds is on its way out. The network has renewed the cop drama, a relatively reliable performer for CBS, for a 15th and final season. The upcoming season will be 10 episodes long and will be shot on the heels of the current season. By the time it wraps, Criminal Minds will have completed 325 episodes, making it one of the longest running TV dramas. The crime series, which is show-run by executive producer Erica Messer, follows an elite team of FBI profilers who analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds, attempting to anticipate their next...

After retiring from the U.S. Senate last week, Jeff Flake is still looking for his "next thing." It might just be at CBS News, which has engaged in talks with the Arizona Republican about a role at the network, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Flake, who emerged as one of President Trump's biggest critics and might challenge him for the party nomination in 2020, was spotted at the network's Manhattan headquarters last Friday. Flake could serve in the standard role for ex-politicians, as an on-air contributor, or as something more, according to knowledgable sources.

**SNIP** ...covers the controversial decision by CBS News and anchor Dan Rather to run a story involving unauthenticated memos claiming President George W. Bush had received favorable treatment during his time in the Texas Air National Guard.

“[Madam] Speaker is the proper way to address Nancy Pelosi”, CBS host Jane Pauley instructed viewers as she led into her gooey puff piece interview with the California Democrat featured on the network’s Sunday Morning. How gushy was the interview with the new Speaker? Well, it could be argued that the toughest question Pauley asked was about whether or not Pelosi could work with President Trump. The video began with Pauley hyping how “Nancy Pelosi capped her comeback this past week surrounded by children”, (a.k.a political props). If that didn’t set the tone for what was to come, then the...

Summary The 60 Minutes interview exposes some major red flags. Elon Musk has no regards for authority or consumers. Autopilot liability may be substantial moving forward. On Sunday night, CBS show 60 Minutes aired a long interview with Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. The piece covered a lot of topics, from the Model 3's part in the company's near death, to the autopilot feature many consumers want to rely on. In the end, I encourage everyone to watch this interview, because there are several major red flags that need to be discussed. First of all, Elon Musk came right out...

The narrative propagated by CBS, actor Michael Weatherly, and writer-producer Glenn Gordon Caron is deceptive and in no way fits with how they treated me on the set of the television show “Bull’’ and retaliated against me for simply asking to do my job without relentless sexual harassment. This is not a “he-said/she-said” case. Weatherly’s behavior was captured on CBS’s own videotape recordings. I feel compelled to chronicle what actually happened after The New York Times published a story about how CBS handled my allegations. I declined to be interviewed for that piece because I wanted to honor the terms...

No generous severance package for former CBS Corp. chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves. The CBS board of directors announced Monday that it has completed its investigation into the myriad allegations of sexual misconduct against its former chief and has decided there are grounds to “terminate for cause.” The most recent hit against the embattled executive came last month in the New York Times, which quoted a former actress named Bobbie Phillips who alleged that Moonves forced himself on her in 1995, when he ran Warner Bros. Television. The story came almost three months after a bombshell report in The New...

Elementary‘s forthcoming seventh season will be its last, CBS announced Monday. “A lot of parties came together and talked about their positions on the show — both in terms of business and in terms of creative — and we all decided that this was an opportune time to say goodbye to a show that has been very, very good to us,” CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl said in a statement to our sister site Deadline. Added EP Carl Beverly: “[Series creator] Rob [Doherty] set out to tell a story, and it feels like he has accomplished what he had set...

In the wake of recent reports that Bull star Michael Weatherly made lewd comments to co-star Eliza Dushku on set, two of Weatherly’s former NCIS castmates are coming to his defense. According to a Dec. 13 report by The New York Times, Dushku was poised to become a series regular on Bull after joining the CBS drama late in Season 1 as defense attorney J.P. Nunnelly. But Dushku said that Weatherly repeatedly made demeaning and crude comments about her during her time on the show, and when she lodged a formal complaint with the network, she was written off the...

CBS on Friday pledged to give $20 million to 18 organizations dedicated to eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace as the network tries to recover from a scandal that led to the ouster of its top executive, Les Moonves. The announcement comes as the network’s crisis deepens, with details emerging from an ongoing investigation into Moonves’ conduct and news surfacing of other instances of sexual misconduct at CBS. In the latest revelation, CBS acknowledged that it reached a $9.5 million confidential settlement last year with actress Eliza Dushku, who said she was written off the show “Bull” in March 2017...

In the 1990s, William Barr, President Trump's pick for attorney general, oversaw a program that sent some 12,000 Haitian asylum seekers to Guantanamo Bay, effectively creating what one detractor called "the world's first HIV detention camp." After operating for about 18 months, the detention system was forcibly ended by a judge in 1993, but Barr defended the practice as recently as 2001. At the time, Barr was serving as attorney general for President George H.W. Bush, and a military coup in Haiti had led to mass executions that targeted thousands of supporters of the overthrown leader. The bloodshed sent thousands...

[CUT - On Bill Barr:] "Well, I can't comment on whether I support [Barr] or not yet. I haven't even begun to review his qualifications or his record in the past," Rubio said Sunday. "I know he's been through the Senate process before. I'm going to watch the Judiciary process very closely. At the appropriate time I'll meet with the nominee and get my own take on it, and then I'll have a decision to make. I generally do not support nominees, for the most part, unless I know them personally [CUT - On Heather Nauert:] “Does she have detailed...