The media distemper was pinned in the red zone this week as the dismantling of the wasteful spending in D.C. continued. All eyes were focused on the USAID scandal, with many journalists taking the stunted position that the government doling out obscene amounts of taxpayer cash to global projects that had no bearing on U.S. interests was something to be defended.  

But as we will see, that was not all that occupied the fevered minds in the press. The Trump administration is moving at a blistering pace on a number of issues, and the media are in a tizzy trying to keep up with their outrage at all of it. This is the massive reveal from the journalism industry right now: The outmoded media do not see anything positive being achieved by Trump right now. It is uniformly negative in the coverage of the moves, decisions, and appointments to this early point.

As such, there were plenty of notable outlets to recognize, but one was the clear winner/loser this week. Let’s look at the participants.

    THE CONTENDERS

MSNBC - Andrea Mitchell signed off from the sinking ship of the cable network on Friday. Stephanie Ruhle deleted her post shaming Greg Abbott where she embarrassed herself by stating the ACA was the same as DEI. Chris Hayes sat with Bill Maher and gave a rambling interview of word-salad responses in which he said voters do not know what they want, the press has to tell them. Hayes also declared the team of 20-something tech gurus under Elon was now running the country. 

WASHINGTON POST - Glenn Kessler gave his attempt at fact-checking the misspent USAID funds, relying on “needs more context” analysis and explaining some funding was from agencies – cherry-picked examples that ignored larger and more widespread waste. Philip Bump lamented that the freeze on some spending was based on bad-faith policies, while he operated in bad faith by ignoring the announcement that vital payments to people were not affected. After over a year of the press telling us Trump wants to expand his power in authoritarian fashion, Ruth Marcus said this is the worst two weeks of a presidency because…Trump is curtailing the government’s power??

CNN - Jake Tapper had a tough time of it. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy got the best of the host in an early interview, then Tapper dared defend the 60 Minutes editing fiasco after his own show earned a defamation ruling against the network. Anderson Cooper sought to defend the FBI from charges of corruption by bringing on the corrupt former agent Andrew McCabe. Brian Stelter took the press release from Politico on the government funds it collects and declared that proved all stories wrong, without any further investigation into the issue. Adding to the dismay at the network were some of the chyrons showing an embarrassing lack of editorial oversight.

CBS NEWS - The network was forced to turn over the full “60 Minutes” interview and transcript to the FCC, and once released, it proved the deceptive editing they engaged in to make Kanala look less incompetent. Margaret Brennan continued to be shamed by Republicans, this time by Rep. Brian Mast. Later, Brennan interviewed a worker from USAID and hid their identity as if they were a whistleblower from the Mafia. Major Garrett thought it was newsworthy to pluck one of the numerous raging white liberal females from TikTok for a lengthy interview.

    WINNER

POLITICO

Easily taking this week’s honors was the outlet at the focus of rampant government spending on news outlets. It began with the report that Politico had issues making its payroll and went downhill from there. While shown not to be mostly a USAID effort, Politico was found to be taking in millions of dollars annually from various federal agencies. This led to numerous other outlets being shown to have similar sweetheart deals, causing financial consternation throughout the media landscape. 

The outlet issued a comment about this funding, deflecting by saying it never received grant monies. All the while, it sidestepped the truth: it was Hoovering up taxpayer revenues while lamenting government cuts. 

There was a decided lack of criticism at the violent rhetoric from Democrats who declared they wanted to blow up the Capitol, and pundits slammed Elon Musk for engaging in cuts the Democrats don't like, based on a poll conducted by…the Democrats.