As longtime readers of mine are aware, I have been writing about political bias in American mainstream media for over 20 years now. When I began, it was all a “lone voice crying in the wilderness” vibe; something I needed to get off of my chest even though I knew that my audience was very, very small. There was no grand plan, I simply liked to write about all kinds of things when I wasn’t on the road for a gig.
All these years later I’m writing for a site that is a part of a larger media company that itself is part of a large media company. We can punch back now, which is something that I didn’t even dream of back in the dark times. As non-plans go, this one has worked out pretty well.
The balance of power really started to shift when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. He was a media-savvy veteran of reality television who’d been in the spotlight for decades. Bright lights didn’t scare him.
He was also the first candidate from either major party to figure out how to truly leverage social media. Up to that point, politicians and campaigns used Twitter and Facebook for fundraising pitches and canned press statements written by staffers. When Trump started stream-of-consciousness tweeting at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings, he weaponized Twitter and was able to get his message to the voters without any hatchet-job filtering. I frequently said that political science programs would one day speak of how he used Twitter in 2016 as the stuff of legend.
One day in the distant future, of course.
Like many conservatives, I was a bit skeptical about how Trump might govern. What almost immediately endeared me to him was the way he handled the mainstream media hacks rather than letting them handle him.
The first year of President Trump’s second term has offered us a master class in how the Republican Party should handle the MSM going forward. The president is no longer alone in his ongoing battle against the inherent bias in the dinosaur media. Vice President JD Vance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also have no patience for the antics of the Dem propagandists who masquerade as journalists.
The tone was set by Vance mere days into the Trump 47 administration when he dropped this gem on CBS Dem lapdog Margaret Brennan:
“I don't really care, Margaret.“
— Ginny Robinson (@ImGinnyRobinson) January 26, 2025
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
pic.twitter.com/qpAKCxDalh
And here is a recent clip of Leavitt shutting down CNN's Kaitlan Collins and chastising her for the White House press corps' lack of curiosity about economic details when Joe Biden was president:
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Karoline Leavitt just DROPPED THE MIC on CNN's Kaitlan Collins 🫳🎤
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 11, 2025
"My predecessor stood up at this podium, and she said inflation doesn't exist. She said the border was secure. And people like YOU just took her at her WORD. And those were two utter LIES."… pic.twitter.com/rPOM8h4408
For far too long — seemingly forever — Republican politicians have let the Dem talking points that the MSMers spout go unchallenged. Following their boss's lead, Vance and Leavitt aren't playing that game. They both understand that the people asking the questions hate their guts and therefore feel no obligation to be polite when responding.
It is going to take years, maybe decades, of deprogramming to get any of the old guard MSM types to change even a little. Both Brennan and Collins routinely — almost eagerly — continue to step on rakes when interviewing Trump 47 people. I've highlighted the ones who are best at pushing back here, but the president has rubbed off on a lot of Republicans around him, which is something I've longed for.
President Trump and his administration have freed up people like my colleagues and me to get the truth out there, however we can. We just spent four years frequently getting our revenue streams cut off for running counter to Dem narratives. We found out that much of that was under orders from the Biden administration.
We're also in a new era of greatly empowered independent journalism, which we have really seen in this past week in Minnesota. As my friend Jennifer Rust wrote, this is Andrew Breitbart's legacy.
None of the punches thrown back at the Dem bootlickers in the media have been knockouts. That would require some sort of self-awareness on the left, and that's not happening anytime soon. As I wrote in the headline, though, they're landing body blows. Those eventually wear down an opponent. My fervent wish for 2026 is that we all keep landing them.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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