He has only had two terms, but whatever. He aced those cognitive exams like nobody has ever aced them before. He’s a genius.
It’s quite clear that the man is out of his mind. How long can this go on?
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
I’m afraid I don’t have the bandwidth right now to go down this rabbit hole on my own but I’m intensely interested in the topic and I look forward to learning about it on this new podcast:
Lots of things keep Chris Hayes up at night. The MS NOW prime time host channeled some of those insomnia-triggering subjects into a hit podcast, “Why Is This Happening?,” which won a Webby Award for best interview/talk show podcast in 2025. Now he’s launching a new podcast, “The AI End Game,” to answer another unsettling question: is AI “unstoppable”?
AI is “moving very fast, and suddenly, it is just everywhere: workplace, schools, media,” Hayes says in a trailer for the podcast released Thursday. He says while AI presents new possibilities, it also “raises a lot of pretty terrifying questions.” And those are the questions he hopes to answer.Apple PodcastsIntroducing WITHpod: The AI End Game
Hayes say he’ll sit down each week with people who’ve studied AI and its effects, as well as refreshing listeners on exactly what AI is–and isn’t. “What happens if it changes not just how we work,” Hayes asks, “but how we think–or, more essentially, who we are?”
Hayes has lined up an all-star group of guests, including The Atlantic journalist Derek Thompson; professor at Wharton and New York Times bestselling author Ethan Mollick; professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and member of the Berkeley AI Research Group Alison Gopnik; former co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google and co-founder of Black in AI Timnit Gebru; philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers; author, host of the “Better Offline” podcast and writer of the “Where’s Your Ed At” newsletter, Ed Zitron; and The New York Times journalist and author, Michael Pollan.
I don’t have enough real understanding of what’s happening to even know the right questions to ask. But Chris Hayes does. And whether we like it or not this is happening and we need to understand it. At least a little bit …
James Downie at MS Now takes a look at the current massive economic discontent among Americans:
For decades, when large numbers of Americans expressed negative feelings about the economy, they were generally reacting to high unemployment, high year-over-year inflation or both. But even as inflation decreased in the latter half of former President Joe Biden’s term, the issue played a central role in Trump’s return to the White House. Since Biden, though, Americans’ views of the economy have been much more negative than typically associated with inflation around 3% and unemployment below 5%.
To be clear, many Americans were already struggling despite low unemployment and inflation before and after the pandemic. Frustration over a two-tiered economy was widespread years before Covid-19, powering the Occupy movement in 2011 and, later, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ first presidential campaign. As economist Mike Konczal noted, prices for essentials, such as food, electricity and motor vehicle insurance, have risen faster than inflation overall — a burden felt more heavily by households with lower incomes. And home prices have spiked while mortgage rates are at their highest in 15 years.
But where past economic discontent was easily explained by measures of unemployment or inflation, clearly something else has been driving the anger in the past few years. A March paper from Jared Bernstein, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Stanford’s Daniel Posthumus, found that “using four-year inflation rather than the more often used annual measure” better predicts consumer sentiment, including recent pessimism. The pandemic-era inflation spike has lingered in voters’ minds because, even as the rate of inflation has come down, prices remain higher than they are “supposed” to be — i.e., what they roughly would have been if the pandemic inflation had never happened. (Polling expert G. Elliott Morris reached a similar conclusion.)
If milk prices jump by 100% one year and 3% the next, you will not forget in the second year that milk used to cost half as much. It also explains why voters would react so negatively to inflation that is not high by historical standards. As economist Paul Krugman is fond of pointing out, prices rose by almost the same amount during Ronald Reagan’s first term as they did under Biden. Because Reagan followed the high inflation of the 1970s, however, voters were used to the inflation of his first term, so he could still run on “morning in America.” Whereas in 2024, the Democrats were defeated.
It is a different America than it was in 1982. There were still many people around who had gone through the Great Depression and WWII. They definitely had different ideas about what constitutes hardship. The baby boom was just coming into full adulthood and were getting ready to take over. Everyone was glad the 70s of Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate and stagflation were coming to an end.
The whole zeitgeist had shifted, not just the economy.
We experienced a little bit of that with the election of Obama. For a time it felt like real progress was being made. Then the Republicans staged a massive tantrum so it didn’t last as long as Reagan’s comeback did but it was real. And as Downie points out, the underlying economic discontent had already been building for quite some time.
Today the country is almost at the point of full revolt. The corruption, the chaos, the billionaire tech-bros, the phoniness along with an economy that is failing to deliver to the working and middle classes is making people angry and depressed. (Not to mention that we went through a horrific trauma with the pandemic that we’ve treated as nothing more than a blip and it was anything but.)
The question is what can a president do about it?
“They could be working with Congress on the affordability agenda, in housing policy, child care, energy, health care,” Bernstein said. “Some of those solutions take time, but newer policy models tend to include immediate help through some form of subsidies or price caps, like capping energy price hikes.”
These measures don’t target “inflation” writ large; instead, they focus on essentials most important to household spending that are unnecessarily expensive because the markets for the items are flawed. But, Bernstein said, “the main acclimation must occur through a combination of time and real wage gains.”
I’m sure that would help. But consider that Joe Biden actually sent out checks to people and had the biggest job and wage growth among the working class in 60 years. It didn’t help. I think the most important thing is to recognize that the whole system is tilted to the wealthy and powerful whether it’s Elon Musk or Jeffrey Epstein and there seems to be no accountability for it. And at the top of that list is Donald Trump the billionaire who is currently stealing the country blind right out in the open.
The Pentagon awarded a multi-million-dollar defense contract to a robotics startup affiliated with Eric Trump, one of President Donald Trump‘s sons, in a move panned by some Democrats as “corruption in plain sight.”
Foundation Future Industries, a Silicon Valley startup developing humanoid robots, landed the $24 million contract to test its “Phantom” android with the Marine Corps, according to a Thursday, April 23, Fox Business report. Company founder and CEO Sankaet Pathak appeared alongside Eric, Foundation’s chief strategy advisor, on the network’s Mornings with Maria on Thursday to speak about the technology and similar advancements in China.
The economic inequality is bad enough. Combined with the abuse of power, chaos and corruption of these Trump years it’s left people in a tailshpin. And as great as those policy prescriptions are (and I totally hope the Democrats enact them as soon as possible if they manage to get the majorites to do it) it won’t be enough. There has to be an accounting for what has happened and reforms to prevent it from happening again, at least in the foreseeable future. (Money is like water and will always find a way eventually…)
Until we can find a way to ensure that there is some sense of fairness and justice in our culture, this era of bad feelings is going to continue.
Update:
This just came across my feed:
Vanity Fair has the guess list. It appears the no Democrats were invited. Presumably, neither were the three liberal justices.
Nice.
To serve in Donald Trump’s Cabinet is to perform for an audience of one, and in the weeks since she was fired by the president, it’s become clear why Pam Bondi’s run as attorney general was a failure: She was unable to convict any of the president’s enemies. Todd Blanche, her deputy and temporary — at least for now — replacement, was taking notes. Now he is taking action.
The Justice Department has filed motions to allow Trump to build his Big Beautiful Ballroom, indicted Anthony Fauci’s former deputy over allegedly conspiring to conceal documents related to the Covid-19 pandemic and moved quickly on superfluous investigations involving the Russia probe that was opened during Barack Obama’s administration.
But this week the department really nailed it. Standing alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, who may himself soon be on the way out, Blanche announced that James Comey, Patel’s predecessor and the president’s longtime foe, was being indicted for threatening Trump’s life. This is exactly the kind of charge the president wanted to see — one so personal and obviously retributive that no one could possible mistake it for blind justice.
For those keeping track, this is the administration’s second indictment against the former FBI director and federal prosecutor. The previous case charged Comey with lying to Congress — a boring charge that no doubt disappointed Trump in its lack of legal sexiness — after numerous experienced prosecutors refused to bring the indictment. It was thrown out of court in November on procedural grounds.
The latest case was brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, where the alleged crime happened. In May 2025, Comey posted a photo on Instagram that showed seashells on a beach spelling out “86 47.” The accompanying caption read “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
The term “86” is well known as a verb; wait staff in restaurants have long “86’d” orders when patrons have changed their minds. It means to cancel. Or to take the early-bird special off the menu. Or to empty the trash out back. (Those painting it as some kind of a Mafia argot are confused; the proper phrase is “deep-six” not “86.”) Throughout the Biden years, “86 46” was a widely circulated phrase online, standing for “Remove Biden.” Former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida used it in a tweet to celebrate that Republicans had “now 86’d” former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — which, incidentally, shows that the saying refers to getting rid of someone in a political sense. In 2022, MAGA activist Jack Posobiec posted something similar about Biden. Even today there are websites selling T-shirts emblazoned with “86 46.” If this case does go to trial, there will be an awful lot of people indicted for threatening the president.
No sentient person of either party saw those wielding this phrase as making a literal, credible death threat. But the right has jumped on it in another of their coordinated hissy fits conducted on the taxpayers’ dime. There has never been a case so silly.
No sentient person of either party saw those wielding this phrase as making a literal, credible death threat. But the right has jumped on it in another of their coordinated hissy fits conducted on the taxpayers’ dime. There has never been a case so silly.
The next day, when he noticed MAGA’s collective pearl-clutching — and was reportedly interviewed by Secret Service agents — Comey deleted the photo, denying he had posted it with any violent intent. Trump refused to believe him, and in the months since the president hasn’t let it go. Now Blanche is offering Comey up to him like a cat delivering a dead mouse to their owner as a gift of love.
While some eager-beaver Republicans, like Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who rushed to the microphones to defend the Justice Department’s actions, many in the party are concerned that this may not be a political winner. The Washington Post quoted several GOP strategists who said voters don’t want Trump litigating old grievances because they’re more concerned with inflation, gas prices and why he went to war with Iran. That’s undoubtedly true, but in a way, it’s a trap for Democrats, and they should be careful about adopting that language, which they have done in the past.
For many decades there has been a long-standing dynamic in which Republicans leave the country in shambles for Democrats to clean up. The Democratic base — along with many Independents and even some Republicans — is clamoring for accountability, but many party officials are saying that the work ahead of them is too overwhelming and they must prioritize righting the ship. Sometimes they suggest that it’s important to “lower the temperature.” This pattern began after the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, when his successor, the establishment Republican Gerald Ford, pardoned him. Ford’s act set off a firestorm on the left, but two decades later it was being praised as steadying the country. Now we can see that it was an act that set us on the road to presidential immunity.
Most Republican presidents who followed Ford tested the law in some fashion. For Ronald Reagan it was Iran-Contra, a scandal that also involved his vice president and successor, George H.W. Bush. For George W. Bush, it was the use of faulty intelligence as a pretext for war with Iraq, Abu Ghraib and the use of torture, and the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Then came Trump’s unprecedented corruption — and his attempts to stay in office following the 2020 presidential election.
Under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department did take action and managed to convict many participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Garland moved slowly with indicting Trump and other high-level officials, which allowed the president to escape justice.
We are dealing with the results of those decisions today, and I fear the lesson Democrats will have learned is that it was a mistake to even try — and that it’s important to focus solely on the proverbial kitchen table issues. If they do, it will give a permission slip for Republicans to repeat this cycle all over again.
The fact is that the majority of voters don’t like the idea of a president bent on personal revenge, but too few of them paid attention to Trump’s speeches during the 2024 campaign in which he declared “I am your retribution.” His motives are clearly driven by revenge, and not because he truly thinks anyone has broken the law. After all, most of the charges against his perceived enemies are acts he has done repeatedly himself, such as making threats against various officials, including posting images of former President Joe Biden that are openly violent, unlike Comey’s seashells in the sand. Trump even made fun of Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who was the victim of political violence when a man entered his house, held him hostage and hit him in the head with a hammer.
Anyone who isn’t a Trump cultist or a political hack knows the difference between holding officials accountable for abuse of power, which Trump and his administration are committing every day, and a personal vendetta against a particular individual against whom the Department of Justice, acting as the presidential law firm, has been desperate to bring an indictment, no matter how flimsy. It could not be more obvious what is happening here, and Democrats must recognize the imperative of seeking accountability for the atrocities committed during the Trump administration.
Republicans will accuse them of being hypocrites because they criticized Trump’s insane prosecutions, but they shouldn’t fall for that line. They should bring selective and vindictive prosecutions to an end, once and for all.
Salon
No financial resources
This just broke (CNN):
Maine Gov. Janet Mills is suspending her Democratic primary campaign for US Senate, clearing the way for Graham Platner to challenge Sen. Susan Collins.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else – the fight – to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” she said in a statement released Thursday. “That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”
Democrats had been bracing for several more weeks of a contentious campaign before the June 9 primary in Maine – a must-win state if they want to have any chance at capturing the Senate majority in November.
No word yet on whether incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins is concerned.
Moves by the GOP suggest it already assumes Platner-the-Oysterman will oppose Collins. Platner told donors earlier this week that that the general election in Maine has already begun, reports The Maine Monitor.
My attention has been elsewhere and I have no informed opinion to offer on Platner, his tattoos or his chances.
As someone who wishes many among the Democratic gerontocracy past their “best by” dates would move aside and make room for younger blood and fresher ideas, this reflection on Mills is encouraging (The New York Times):
Her exit is a blow not only to the two-term sitting governor but also to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the Democratic Party establishment that he leads. Mr. Schumer, the minority leader, has for almost two decades chosen his party’s Senate candidates with little internal opposition.
That era may be coming to an end — and Ms. Mills’s ill-fated campaign is not the only evidence. In a year when Democrats have grown increasingly bullish about their chances to win back a Senate majority, several of Mr. Schumer’s handpicked candidates have struggled to gain traction in their primary contests.
In addition to Ms. Mills, Mr. Schumer and his political apparatus have backed Senate candidates in Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota who face formidable challengers in upcoming primary elections.
The DSCC backed Cal Cunningham, 37, for U.S. Senate from North Carolina in 2010 over NC SecState Elaine Marshall, then 65. (Too old, too female, and too independent, one supposes. Mills is 78.) Marshall won the nomination after a runoff primary. The DSCC cut her off without a nickel. She lost to Richard Burr in the general. The spouse tells the DSCC where it can go whenever a fundraiser calls.
The DSCC backed Cunningham again for Senate in 2020. Yes, that Cal Cunningham.
Schumer’s past his “best by” date.
Several of those challengers have made opposition to Mr. Schumer’s leadership central to their campaigns. Last month in Illinois, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won her state’s Senate primary while pledging to oppose a future Schumer bid to be party leader.
The rebuke will only grow stronger if those candidates do well in November, after which it is almost certain that Mr. Schumer would face a serious challenge to his leadership post in the Senate.
Mr. Schumer has also recruited candidates in Alaska, North Carolina and Ohio who are on glide paths to the general election.
Ahem. Schumer didn’t pick Roy Cooper in North Carolina. Roy Cooper picked Roy Cooper.
The worst ruling in a century
The Supreme Court handed down its Callais decision about the time I finished my morning posts on Wednesday. Written by Justice Samuel Alito, it is a blockbuster ruling, and not in a good way. Hours later, Rick Hasen called the 6-3 decision in a case from Louisiana “one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century.” Callais guts what the Roberts court had not already whittled away of protections for minority representation passed sixty years ago, Hasen writes, “while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the Act.” Of course. Alito wrote it.
Hasen’s assessment is blistering:
This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the Act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’s judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation. It gives the green light to further partisan gerrymandering. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters. It’s a disaster for American democracy.
Hasan explains that under the original VRA, proving intent to discriminate under “vote dilution” schemes proved difficult:
Congress responded boldly to that ruling—it rewrote Section 2 of the VRA to allow minority voters to say that plans that had a racially discriminatory effect were vote dilution. And as it was doing this, John Roberts was a young Department of Justice lawyer in the Reagan White House who spearheaded the effort to scuttle a stronger Section 2 in Congress. He failed. The new Section 2 made clear that Congress wanted to increase minority representation and alleviate the burden on voters to win these cases by eliminating an intent requirement.
The new Section 2 was a tremendous success, leading to the election of scores of minority-preferred candidates in Congress and on the state and local level. In 1986, in Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court interpreted the revised Section 2 to require courts to apply a multi-part test to determine when a jurisdiction had to draw districts to give minority voters a fair chance to elect representatives of their choice. The result of these two efforts is why today about a quarter of Congress is represented by a person of color, but it is especially thanks to Section 2.
The Roberts Court consistently has whittled away at the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, for example, with the Shelby County v. Holder which demolished the Section 5 requirement that states with a history of race discrimination receive federal approval for changing voting rules. “When the Court killed Section 5,” Hasen writes, the Court “assured us that there was always Section 2 to protect minority voters.”
Then in 2021, the Court took the first shot at Section 2. In Brnovich v. DNC, Justice Alito, who had always voted against expansive minority voting rights on the Supreme Court, considered how Section 2 applied to laws making it harder for people to register and vote. Rather than following the text of Section 2 or Congress’s intent, Alito imposed such a tough test that since Brnovich there has not been a single successful Section 2 case aimed at these voting restrictions.
And now comes Callais. Let’s not sugarcoat things: Alito’s opinion eviscerates Section 2 as applied to redistricting. He throws out the Gingles test—while denying he is doing so—and has restored a requirement that plaintiffs prove discriminatory intent when challenging district lines. Only if a computer algorithm would protect minority voters by chance do they have a chance to win such a case. What’s worse, the state can defend their maps by claiming that they were merely engaging in partisan gerrymandering. This move is thanks to what the Supreme Court wrote in the 2019 Rucho case—that though partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, it is out of the Court’s realm to fix.
Meaning that when Louisiana’s white Republicans redistrict away black opportunities for representation, they merely need argue that they’ve drawn districts to help Republicans, not whites. Hasan calls the transparent nonsense “outrageous.”
As outrageous as convicted felon and twice impeached Donald Trump swearing an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” then cozying up to dictators and behaving as if the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are meaningless. As outrageous as the sycophants standing with him who took similar oaths that they “will bear true faith and allegiance” to a constitution born in reaction to monarchy, then making obeisance to a would-be king. As outrageous as the disingenuous behavior of six Supreme Court justices led by Roberts who took the same oath plus this one:
“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”
But that’s the America we live in. For now.
The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed under the Johnson administration overturned the hundred-year-old Jim Crow system whites erected to resist the Reconstruction Amendments. The CRA and VRA helped define the last 60 years as much as the conservative movement that arose to resist them tooth and nail. They increased opportunities for minority citizens to register and vote and, over time, led to legislatures that more resembled the whole of America, a multicultural America. But like the Reconstruction Amendments before them, those laws did not change many hearts, any more than World War II drove a stake through the heart of fascism. Racists, fascists, and — as I’ve long argued — royalists, simply conceal their true selves when fortune turns against them. They learn to speak in dog whistles and whispers. They bide their time, marshal their resources, and organize until it is time again to unmask. Like now under Trumpism.
“He’s been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live,” a Trump confidant told The Atlantic. “He wants to be remembered as the one who did things that other people couldn’t do, because of his sheer power and force of will.”
“He is unburdened by political concerns and is able to do what is truly right rather than what is in his best political interests,” an administration official added in an interview with the magazine. “Hence the decision to strike Iran.”
He’s politically weak but he doesn’t care. He’s gross and vile but he sees that as righteous. And his foul character has finally fully merged with his psychopathy. What happens when the leader of a superpower falls to dementia and megalomania?
As I was Saying:
Even Jonathan Turley is saying that this Comey case is beyond the pale:
For over a decade, I have been one of Comey’s most vocal and consistent critics. I have dozens of columns criticizing his excesses and the damage that he has done to our system. For that reason, I would prefer to crawl into one of Comey’s conversant shells than write a column supporting him. However, here we are. The fact is that I believe that this indictment is facially unconstitutional absent some unknown new facts.
To convict Comey, the Justice Department will have to show that his adolescent picture was a “true threat” under 18 U.S.C. § 871 and § 875(c). It is not.
The First Amendment is designed to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech rarely needs protection. It also protects bad and hateful speech. It even protects lies so long as those lies are not used for the purpose of fraud or other criminal conspiracies. In 1969, the Supreme Court declared a more direct threat protected under the First Amendment. In Watts v. United States, an 18-year-old anti-war protester exclaimed, “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.” While the court did rule that “the statute [criminalizing presidential threats] is constitutional on its face,” it emphasized that “what is a threat must be distinguished from what is constitutionally protected speech.”
The court ruled that the expression of wanting to kill a president is “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.” Saying the same thing in shell is only further removed from criminal speech.
Citizens are allowed to denounce and even wish a president ill. I have written about what I called this “age of rage.” It is not our first. This nation was founded in rage. The Boston Tea Party was rage. In forming this more perfect union, we created the world’s greatest protection of free speech in history. It is arguably the most American contribution to our Bill of Rights. Great Britain did not — and still does not — protect free speech as we do.
It comes at a cost. Perhaps Comey is that cost. However, he has a right to write out any hateful thoughts that come to him on his walks on the beach…We will have to wait to see if the administration has a “smoking shell” allegation that makes Comey’s shell speech more menacing as a willful and knowing threat. I cannot imagine what that would be beyond a sleeper surfer hit squad waiting for a shell signal.
He’s not the only one:
In a scathing response published Tuesday in the National Review, Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy tore apart the Trump administration’s second “bogus” indictment of Comey, calling it“even more absurd than the previous indictment.”
Comey’s offense? He posted a picture of seashells arranged on the beach in North Carolina that read “8647.” He claimed he’d come across the shells, already arranged, while taking a walk and assumed it was a political message. Some accused the former FBI director of calling to “86,” or kill, the forty-seventh president, Donald Trump.
McCarthy wrote: “After uproar generated by the administration, Comey took down the post and publicly asserted that he opposes violence and meant no such suggestion. He also voluntarily submitted to interviews with the Secret Service—which proceeded to drop what should never have been a criminal investigation. There was not a threat of violence against the president, much less an unambiguous call for his assassination. Nor would it be remotely possible, on the known evidence, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Comey intended violence.
“This farce, then, is nothing more than a continuation of Trump’s lawfare campaign against a political enemy. It is inconceivable that Comey could be convicted of a crime in these circumstances, but the president’s minions are putting him through the anxiety, expense, and stigma of the judicial process,” McCarthy added.
I think that says it all. It’s a joke.
Bari Weiss is getting her comeuppance:
“This isn’t what a turnaround looks like. This is what a train wreck looks like.”
That was how one veteran television executive put it to me Tuesday, after I asked about new ratings data showing that Tony Dokoupil’s “CBS Evening News” has continued to hemorrhage viewers and sink to new lows, as Bari Weiss’ hand-selected anchor struggles to hold the audience.
Indeed, according to Nielsen data obtained by Status, Dokoupil’s most recent week, beginning April 20, marked the lowest-rated stretch in total viewers since he took over the broadcast. The program averaged just 3.7 million viewers—slipping below the once-unthinkable 4 million threshold. In the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic, the show averaged only 467,000 viewers.
But that’s not the worst of it. According to the ratings data, the broadcast has now logged three consecutive weeks under 4 million viewers, a prolonged slump that was once unimaginable. The alarming audience erosion likely won’t be aided by the fact that summer is about to begin, suggesting that he may be stuck in the mud for some time. At the very least, it is not the narrative the David Ellison-owned network wanted saturating the public discourse as upfronts season gets underway.
Ultimately, April 2026 ranked as the second lowest-rated April for the “CBS Evening News” this century in total viewers—and the lowest ever in the 25–54 demographic. In that key demo, Dokoupil’s broadcast has now posted 12 straight weeks below 600,000 viewers, undercutting Weiss’ push to reinvent the broadcast to resonate with younger audiences.
Meanwhile, the Gayle King-led “CBS Mornings” is also struggling, signaling a network-wide public image problem under Weiss’ leadership. The show, which posted its worst ratings on record in the first quarter of 2026, saw its lowest-rated April on record in both total audience and the 25-54 demographic. According to the data obtained by Status, the show has now delivered four consecutive months under 1.8 million total viewers and under 300,000 in the 25–54 demo.
The right wing has Fox, Newsmax, OAN and dozens of influencers and podcast bros. If people want their news to be right wing, that’s where they go. If they want more or less straight news they (used to) go to the networks. If they want “fair and balanced” they go to CNN and if they want left leaning opinion they go to MS Now. Fox and its imitators have the right locked up. Why anyone would think that’s fertile ground for an audience, especially in a time when the Republican party is an abomination and the existing audience is actively hostile to it is a real mystery.
The contrarians like Weiss just assumed that they are the center of the universe with their grievances against the left so it made good sense to alienate the existing CBS audience by sucking up to Donald Trump.
It’s not working.