IF BARI WEISS SINCERELY BELIEVES THAT PRO-GOP EXTREMISTS ARE MAINSTREAM, SHE'S ANOTHER OUT-OF-TOUCH COASTAL ELITIST

A couple of weeks ago, Bari Weiss explained her "vision" for CBS News:

Bari Weiss says she wants to use her new perch at CBS News to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in American political and cultural life. She says the aim is to sideline voices like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and elevate… pic.twitter.com/hfbM4gOwcN

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 25, 2025

The New Republic's Alex Shephard wrote:

For Weiss, the decline of the American media is best exemplified by the rise of Nick Fuentes (a Nazi), Andrew Tate (a virulent misogynist), and Hasan Piker (a leftist streamer who pushes universal health care while playing video games). For what it’s worth, she is sitting next to Ben Shapiro while she says all of this....

“Those people don’t actually represent our values, and they don’t think that they represent the values or the worldview of the vast majority of Americans,” Weiss says, growing more passionate. “This is an opportunity to speak for the 75 percent, for the people on the center-left and the center-right that still believe in equality of opportunity, that still believe passionately in the American project, that still believe in all of the things that everyone in this room believes in: liberty and freedom and individual responsibility and, on a basic level, the right to know what is exactly going on in the world. Not the world as propagandists and ideologues imagine it to be, but what’s actually going on in the world.”

... The example of a “center-left” and “center-right” discussion she cites? That’s right, it’s a Free Press–sponsored debate over gun control between former NRA head Dana Loesch and nightmare Thanksgiving guest Alan Dershowitz.

You probably assume that Weiss is cynically attempting to redefine Fox News conservatism as centrism -- but I wonder if she actually believes her own nonsense. She's distancing herself from Carlson, Tate, and Fuentes. She may sincerely think of Dershowitz as the kind of Democrat who says, "My party left me!" She might actually believe that conservatism minus Nazis, proud homophobes, and rape apologists is centrism.

In other words, she might actually believe that she's appealing to the middle with this upcoming event:

Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, is scheduled to moderate a network town hall event with Erika Kirk, the widow of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk....

The event will air on 13 December at 8pm and will focus on “grief, faith, politics, and more”, according to internal marketing materials.

Maybe she's just doing what she appears to be doing: trying to make CBS News the first well-financed competitor to Fox, all while hoping she'll get the chance to do the same at CNN if Larry and David Ellison buy its parent company and hand control of the news channel to her.

But Weiss is a coastal elitist, and many coastal elitists -- Ezra Klein, for instance -- fell for the notion that Charlie Kirk was a widely beloved, massively popular figure before his death. Many mainstream media figures responded to Donald Trump's 2016 victory (despite his popular-vote loss) by concluding that the entire country is MAGA apart from a few small, out-of-touch liberal enclaves. The GOP's midterm losses in 2018, Trump's own loss in 2020, and Democrats' decent showing in the 2022 midterms didn't disabuse these left-centrist elitists of their belief in a fully MAGA America, and Trump's victory in 2024 (by one and a half points) persuaded them that the country had undergone a permanent realignment -- a belief they're only now beginning to shake, as Democrats win (or overperform in) election after election.

Weiss -- who attended Columbia University, lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and is married to a woman -- might still believe that everyone in America who lives more than fifty miles from an ocean is a Trump-loving, Kirk-deifying zealot. But Kirk was never the massively popular, universally beloved figure right-wing propagandists and gullible centrists tell us he was. Here's some polling YouGov did just after his death:

Barely half the country was familiar with Kirk when he died. And as subsequent YouGov polling has made clear, he was far from universally loved:

YouGov says, "Popularity is the % of people who have a positive opinion on a topic." For Kirk, that number is 25%. And he's more disliked than liked.

If Weiss is trying to manufacture consent, I get it, and she's a menace. But I think she might believe her own BS, which means she's in an elitist media bubble and she's a menace.

THE ANTI-TRUMP BACKLASH IS BIG, BUT IT COULD BE A LOT BIGGER

I thought the hype might be real. I thought frustration with the status quo might give Democrat Aftyn Benn a win, or at least a photo finish, in yesterday's special congressional election in Tennessee's 7th district, where Donald Trump won by 22 points last year.

It didn't happen. The Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, won by 9. That's very good news for Democrats -- a 13-point swing since 2024 is huge -- but it isn't better news than Democrats got on Election Day and in other special elections this year. In The New York Times, Nate Cohn tells us that the numbers suggest a typical power swing in 2026 and 2028, not a massive realignment:

... the winning party in the last five presidential elections has gone on to lose each of the next five midterms — and four of the next five presidential elections.

... the backlash against Mr. Trump and simmering dissatisfaction has yielded a familiar political landscape:

* Mr. Trump’s approval rating is at 41 percent; on average, the prior five presidential winners were at 42 percent at this point in their terms.

* The Democrats lead by about five points in the early generic midterm polls; on average, the party out of power led by four points at this stage after the last five elections.

* The Democrats ran about eight points better in the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia than those states’ lean with respect to the country in the last election; on average, the party out of power ran seven points ahead in New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races without incumbents.

There's only one data point that seems unusual:

* Democrats have run 17 points better in special congressional elections than those districts’ lean in the last election; on average, the party out of power ran six points ahead over the last two decades. This lopsided Democratic advantage at least partly reflects the party’s edge in low-turnout elections, but that will still help the party fare well in the relatively low-turnout midterms.

What this suggests is that Democrats should do well in the next election cycle or two. Republicans and the gatekeepers of conventional wisdom agree on this: Politico's headline is "GOP Frets ‘Dangerous’ Result in Tennessee." A few quotes from that story:

“Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle,” said one House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Republicans can survive if we play team and the Trump administration officials play smart. Neither is certain.” ...

“I’m glad we won. But the GOP should not ignore the Virginia, New Jersey and Tennessee elections,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is retiring from his swingy Omaha-based district, said. “We must reach swing voters. America wants some normalcy.” ...

“It was too close,” said one House GOP leadership aide, who was also granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race.

But the numbers aren't pointing to a transformative change in American politics -- a wipeout that consigns the GOP, or at least the Donald Trump/Stephen Miller/Russell Vought/Mike Johnson GOP, to the dustbin of history, and opens the door for truth and reconciliation commissions, Nuremberg-style trials, and significant progressive change. None of that seems likely right now. What seems likely is a fairly ordinary party swing.

A recap of tonight's special election in TN-07 (plus a WAY-TOO-EARLY model of the 2026 midterms). A swing of 13 points would put Dems over 250 seats in the U.S. House. A more reasonable scenario—say, D+6—still gives them the House, and maybe the Senate. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/what-the-s...

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— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) December 2, 2025 at 10:56 PM

We know that Republicans pursue transformative agendas even after close wins -- see 2000, 2016, and 2024. Democrats don't. Maybe that will change if Democrats manage a trifecta in 2028 -- but that's a tall order because Republican dominance in small rural states gives the GOP a Senate advantage.

But will Republicans continue to sink? Jamelle Bouie seems to think so.

a thing to ask yourself re: the GOP's electoral position is what could happen over the next year that could *improve* its position? and what could trump do, plausibly, that might *boost* his numbers with the public?

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 2, 2025 at 9:44 PM

if you struggle to answer either then you have a good sense of how fucked the republicans are right now

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) December 2, 2025 at 9:44 PM

The one thing President Trump could do is accept defeat when, as seems likely, the Supreme Court's Republicans do the bidding of their corporate masters and rule that Trump can't impose tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. As I've noted a few times, Trump will be able to reinstate most of the tariffs under the terms of other laws that aren't at issue in this Supreme Court case. If he takes the loss and gives up on the tariffs, he'll improve his party's chances in future elections. But I assume he has so much emotional investment in tariffs that he'll reinstate them and wait to be sued again.

Trump and congressional Republicans really might make life in America so awful that Republican electoral losses in the future will be far worse than projected. The loss of Obamacare subsidies for 2026, which seems all but inevitable now, could be a transformative event, as could an AI crash in the financial markets. But for now, I think we're looking at normal politics, not an upheaval.

(And although Trump doesn't seem to be trying to prevent free and fair elections yet -- probably because his ego won't let him admit that his party is hurting -- that could change if the 2026 numbers look really bad for the GOP.)

*****

One last point I want to make: I see that there's some debate over whether the progressive Aftyn Behn was the right candidate for her district.

Despite @aftynbehn.bsky.social generating real excitement with an authentic progressive anti-corruption message and getting closer than anyone in #TN7, *experts* are already dropping predictable “a centrist would’ve done better” takes - as though that hasn’t been tried here many times.

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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 8:02 AM

I don't believe that the 13-point swing happened exclusively because Behn ran a progressive campaign that excited voters. I think the major reason it happened is that there's more interest in voting for Democrats of all stripes than there was in 2024. Progressive campaigns inspire some voters -- Zohran Mamdani's campaign was extraordinary, and Behn's campaign clearly created some excitement -- but they also inspire backlash. (Mamdani didn't win by double digits. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill did.)

If you wanted to build the ideal Democratic candidate in a lab, I suspect you'd want to create someone who sounds like a transformative progressive (to motivate progressive voters) but also projects a belief in normie-ness and incrementalism. What you'd create, in other words, is Barack Obama in 2008. It's no surprise that he won the largest victory of any presidential candidate in this century.

I'm sorry this is the case. I'd like to believe that more progressive candidates can win huge victories. I just don't see it. I think America needs transformative change, and I think unashamed progressives can win elections outside super-liberal enclaves -- New York City isn't as left-wing as you think -- but I think the excitement advantage is at least partly offset by normie voters' fear of radicalism. I wish it were as easy to elect a left-wing radical in America as it is to elect a right-wing radical, but that's not the country we live in.

WHAT I'D BE SAYING ABOUT THE BOAT STRIKES IF I WERE A TRUMP CRITIC IN CONGRESS

I know we're all focused on the legality of the September 2 "double tap" strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. But because I think many Americans don't care what harm comes to brown people who appear to be smuggling drugs that are killing Americans in large numbers, I wonder if the most effective line of attack on this undeclared war is to question its legality.

I keep thinking about a paragraph that appeared in a Washington Post story yesterday:

Still, the Defense Department has privately acknowledged to lawmakers that nearly all of the strikes have targeted suspected shipments of cocaine — rather than fentanyl, the leading cause of U.S. overdose deaths. Moreover, most of the narcotics moved through the Caribbean are headed toward Europe and Western Africa rather than the United States.

Yes, we should talk about legality -- America shouldn't be run by proud war criminals. But let's also start asking: Are we putting American servicemembers in harm's way to prevent shipments of drugs to other countries? I thought the policy of this administration was "America First." And given the fact that fentanyl is the drug that's doing the most harm to America, do we have any evidence whatsoever that we're targeting shippers of fentanyl?

The paragraph quoted above links to an earlier Washington Post story that raises serious questions about the purpose of these boat attacks. (I'm continuing to treat reporting from the Post as reliable because the news side of the paper is still clearly a serious journalistic enterprise. It hasn't followed the opinion section into right-wing hackery.) First, it's not clear that their real purpose of the attacks is to stop the flow of drugs:

The military strikes ... [have] brought U.S. forces into striking distance of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro....

“When I saw [an internal document on the strikes],” a senior U.S. national security official said, “I immediately thought, ‘This isn’t about terrorists. This is about Venezuela and regime change.’ But there was no information about what it was really about.”

We're clearly headed for a war with Venezuela -- another war for oil. Many Americans, especially young men, voted for Trump last year in the belief that he'd be less likely than Kamala Harris to embroil us in a forever war. Across the political spectrum, ordinary Americans want to avoid another war for oil. Why not talk more about that?

And if these are strikes aimed at the drug trade, it's not the drug trade that does the most harm to America.

... records and interviews with 20 people familiar with the route or the strikes, including current and former U.S. and international officials, contradict the administration’s claims. The [targeted] passage, they said, is not ordinarily used to traffic synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, present in 69 percent of drug overdose deaths last year. Nor are the drugs typically headed for the United States.

Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean nation more than 1,000 miles south and 1,200 miles east of Miami, is both a destination market for marijuana and a transshipment point for South American cocaine bound for West Africa and Europe, according to U.S. officials, Trinidadian police and independent analysts. The fentanyl seized in the U.S., in contrast, is typically manufactured in Mexico using precursors from China and smuggled in through the land border, most often by U.S. citizens....

Most of the South American cocaine bound for North America flows through the Pacific, but some does depart Venezuela through the Caribbean, according to U.S. officials and analysts who track drug routes. Much of it courses overland through the western states of Zulia and Falcón before shipping northward to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic. Some travels by air, departing clandestine airstrips in Maracaibo or Apure state for Central America and onward to Mexico and the United States.

It’s less common, investigators say, to ship U.S.-bound cocaine from the northeastern state of Sucre across the narrow Bocas del Dragón channel to Trinidad — the route the administration has targeted. Trinidad is used far more frequently as a gateway to Europe....

One recently retired senior Trinidadian police official, asked whether Sucre traffickers were bringing drugs intended for the United States, chuckled.

“Why would they use Trinidad and Tobago to transport drugs to the United States, when you have Colombia and Mexico and all of these other places that are closer?”

So are we really launching these strikes in order to stop opioids from coming into America? And if not, what are we really doing and why are we doing it?

THE BENIGN EXPLANATION FOR TRUMP'S MRI REMARKS ISN'T GREAT FOR HIM EITHER

AP won the internet yesterday with this snarky headline:

Trump says he’ll release MRI results but doesn’t know what part of his body was scanned

AP reports:

President Donald Trump said he’ll release the results of his MRI test that he received in October.

“If you want to have it released, I’ll release it,” the Republican president said Sunday during an exchange with reporters as he traveled back to Washington from Florida.

He said the results of the MRI were “perfect.”

... Trump added Sunday that he has “no idea” on what part of his body he got the MRI.

“It was just an MRI,” he said. “What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”

Here's a fuller version of that last quote. Trump was nasty to the reporter who asked him the specifics of the MRI. (The reporter was a woman, of course -- Trump hates female reporters who ask him unflattering questions.)

“What part of your body was the MRI looking at?” the reporter asked

“I have no idea, it was just an MRI- what part of the body?" Trump fired back. "It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it — I got perfect part, which you would be incapable of doing! Goodnight, everybody. You, too!”

Many people assume that if he denied it was a brain MRI, then that's exactly what it must have been.

"If Trump denies they did a MRI of his brain, then it sounds like they did a MRI of his brain," opined Bluesky user Zobear....

"If you had an MRI and didn’t know what it was taken for, it definitely was the brain," agreed Bluesky user bd-nola....

"Tell us you had a brain MRI without saying you had a brain MRI," said comedian Hayden Black.

"Trump’s reply to what the MRI scanned being 'it’s not the brain' is a dead giveaway it was definitely the brain," observed Bluesky user kbethany.

But I have a confession to make: I had an MRI in 2022 and I didn't remember what part of the body it was for until I looked it up this morning.

I'm a fairly healthy 66-year-old who had good employer-based medical coverage three years ago and now have Medicare (traditional) and a good Medicare supplement. So I get attentive medical care. I'm being monitored for a few conditions that aren't life-threatening or significantly life-impairing, but the doctors want to make sure they don't get worse. My memory was that the MRI was for one of those conditions, which was focused below the neck. It was for another condition below the neck.

So maybe I have dementia too! But I don't think so. I'm not a brilliant thinker, but I come here every day and write these posts and I think they're a sign that my brain is working fine. No doctor has ever asked me to take that cognitive test Trump talks about incessantly.

Obviously, Trump's doctors give him that test. They must be monitoring something -- maybe the aftereffects of a stroke or mini-stroke? I'm sure they think he's at risk of dementia -- his father had it.

But it's possible that he's getting so much medical care, for so many conditions, that he genuinely can't remember why he had the MRI, despite having a perfectly adequate memory. (He certainly has a high-functioning memory when it comes to grudges.)

We've seen the hand bruise and the swollen ankles and the stumbles. We've seen the naps. We know that the White House has acknowledged that Trump suffers from chronic venous insufficiency. And we know he's been talking about heaven a lot, which suggests that his health isn't great and he's sharp enough to understand that.

Regular readers know that I don't think Trump has dementia -- mild cognitive impairment, maybe, but not dementia, at least for now. (MCI can lead to dementia, but doesn't always.) On the other hand, I think Trump's physical health could be quite bad. This doesn't mean he's on the verge of death -- doctors can keep people in poor health alive and more or less functional for a long time -- but it could mean his body is more at risk of failure than his mind.