- Several items on the murdering of “60 Minutes,” and how loyalty to Trump is more important that expertise or experience;
- Another Trump appointee with no experience, only loyalty;
- The dismantling of an ocean monitoring system;
- The motivation behind the cancellations of Pride Month by red states;
- White supremacy, and Christian deference to a higher world.
Progressives build and expand, in the name of increasing knowledge and understanding and improving the human condition; conservatives tear down and reduce, in the name of preserving their pre-Enlightenment traditions and obsolete cosmologies. The latter is much easier.
NY Times, yesterday: Scott Pelley Accuses CBS News Boss of ‘Murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’, subtitled “In an explosive staff meeting, Mr. Pelley, a correspondent for the long-running Sunday news show, blasted Bari Weiss, the CBS editor in chief, and Nick Bilton, the show’s new executive producer.”
CBS News faced a fresh wave of turmoil on Monday after Scott Pelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent, laced into the show’s newly hired executive producer during a staff meeting and accused Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, of “murdering” the longstanding Sunday news program.
In an extraordinary exchange, Mr. Pelley, his newscaster’s baritone sometimes shaking in anger, told Nick Bilton, the new executive producer, that he had “slender” qualifications for his new job and questioned the network’s commitment to the future of the program, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
The 10 a.m. gathering, held at the program’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, was intended as a formal introduction to Mr. Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker who was appointed last week as part of a major shake-up at “60 Minutes.” CBS fired Tanya Simon, the previous executive producer, and her deputy, along with Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, two of the show’s correspondents — an event that Mr. Pelley referred to as “Black Thursday.”
The meeting quickly turned tense — not a surprise after months of strain between veteran journalists at “60 Minutes” and Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist who was a longtime critic of legacy media institutions before she became the head of one last year. She was appointed by David Ellison, a tech scion who took control of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, in a multibillion-dollar merger.
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[Mr. Bilton] also warned that the broadcast television industry that incubated “60 Minutes” would soon be obsolete. “Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting, OK?” Mr. Bilton said, saying the show had to adapt. “Bari loves this institution,” he added. “She loves ’60 Minutes.’”
At that, Mr. Pelley interrupted.
“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” the correspondent said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
Mr. Pelley added: “She has no qualifications for her job; you have slender qualifications for this job. The changes that she’s made at the ‘Evening News’ have been catastrophic, so why should we expect that any of this is going to be any better?”
Recurring theme: replace experience and expertise with loyalty to Trump.
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Salon, Sophia Tesfaye, yesterday: Bari Weiss brings Trumpism to “60 Minutes”, subtitled “CBS News is pushing out dissenters, replacing them with inexperienced hires”
Bari Weiss is running the Trump playbook at “60 Minutes.” It goes like this: Take an institution that still commands public trust, install loyalists with no relevant experience in positions of authority, fire the people who push back, dress the whole operation in the language of reform — fairness, innovation, a new direction — and you dare anyone to prove that what you’re really doing is building a protection racket.
For years before she landed at CBS News in October, Weiss built a career criticizing ideological conformity and supposed institutional intolerance. Yet in her brief tenure atop the network’s news division, she has presided over exactly the kind of purge-and-replace operation that has become synonymous with Trumpism.
Donald Trump does not govern by expertise; he governs by loyalty and the elimination of dissent, filling critical posts with people whose chief qualification is that they will not tell him no. Weiss has imported this model into the most-watched program in American television.
Again: “Donald Trump does not govern by expertise; he governs by loyalty and the elimination of dissent, filling critical posts with people whose chief qualification is that they will not tell him no.” Authoritarianism.
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Two more.
- HuffPost, 29 May 2026: Longtime ‘60 Minutes’ Correspondent Says Trump Has ‘Executed’ Program, subtitled “Steve Kroft, who worked at ’60 Minutes’ for 30 seasons, believes the president ‘finally got his wish’ amid a growing list of staff departures.”
“Since I retired, I often wondered what would happen to ‘60 Minutes,’” said Kroft, who concluded his run at the program in 2019 after 30 seasons. “But I never expected it would be executed by the president of the United States.”
“There is no smoking gun,” he continued. “But [Trump’s] fingerprints and DNA are all over this. He’s been making threats against ‘60 Minutes’ and how he wanted it gone. And he finally got his wish.”
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- Robert Reich, today: Who Murdered “60 Minutes”?, subtitled “Hint: It wasn’t its renowned correspondents or former executive producer. And it certainly wasn’t the viewing public.”
CBS News’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, recently announced in an email to staff a major shakeup of the revered broadcast, starting with the removal of “60 Minutes” executive producer, Tanya Simon, for Nick Bilton, who has no experience producing a television news show.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bilton said he was excited “to take what I believe is largely an unutilized news brand and take it into the modern age.”
Unutilized? Modern age?
“60 Minutes” is the most successful television news broadcast in U.S. history. It has remained the #1 news program for 50 straight years and consistently ranks among the top 10 of all Nielsen-rated television programs.
And it pulls in a fortune for CBS. “60 Minutes” is one of the most profitable programs in all of television, generating tens of millions in annual profit for CBS. In one recent year, its advertising revenues were $67.5 million. The network wholly owns the franchise, which makes it a gold mine. It’s the most lucrative and prestigious journalism operation on the network.
This goes beyond “if it ain’t broke ….”
So what then?
This much is clear. CBS is being “murdered,” as correspondent Scott Pelley calls what’s happening, not because of economics but because of politics. Economically, “60 Minutes” is a gold mine. Politically, Trump thinks it’s dangerous as hell because it tells the truth about him and his regime, and wants it killed.
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One day we will look back on the murder of “60 Minutes” as one of the travesties of Trump’s despicable reign.
In the meantime, boycott CBS.
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Short items. First one related to the above.
- JMG, today, from MediaWeek: REPORT: CBS May Hire Joe Rogan For “60 Minutes”
- Once again, Trump values loyalty over experience or expertise. The worst get to the top.
- The Atlantic, David Frum, today: Trump’s Strange Choice for Director of National Intelligence, subtitled “The president’s selection of Bill Pulte is both baffling and predictable.”
- “Pulte has no intelligence background; no national-security expertise. He’s an ultra-partisan with a highly quarrelsome personality and great inherited wealth. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about his record of public or personal achievement.”
- CNN, today: Trump names controversial top housing official to be acting director of national intelligence
- ” Pulte — a wealthy businessman turned Federal Housing Finance Agency director — appears to be an unusual choice given his lack of demonstrated experience in national intelligence. But he has served as an unlikely political attack dog against the Federal Reserve and many of Trump’s perceived political enemies.”
- NY Times, yesterday: Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System, subtitled “The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research. (Via)
- They’re not only cutting off funding to research programs, they’re spending money to dismantle them. Why again is the Trump administration not an enemy infiltrating the US to bring it down? Can MAGA explain this? Is it all about reverting to cave-man priorities?
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- AlterNet, today: How these red state governors are trying to replace Pride Month
- Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Utah. They invoke God, without understanding that these are evolutionary motivations about expanding the tribe. And so individual choice and freedom must be suppressed.
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- He’s still doing this. Pure white supremacy.
- JMG (from NYT [unlocked], today: Hegseth Axes Black, Female Officers From Promotions
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- Perhaps moot by now.
- Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, yesterday: The Only Way Lance Wallnau Can Defend Trump’s Slush Fund Is To Lie About It
- A common pattern. Christians live for a higher world, and so feel entitled to lie in this one.
