{"id":1275,"date":"2026-06-09T09:36:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2026-06-09T09:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T09:36:25","slug":"trumps-flunkies-are-infecting-more-than-just-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1275","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s flunkies are infecting more than just government"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bari Weiss was hired by CBS to be editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025, when Paramount Skydance acquired CBS. <\/p>\n

Read more Knick\u2019s legend Bill Bradley: Trump is \u2018second fiddle\u2019 to fans<\/a><\/p>\n

Weiss had no television-news experience. She was a New York Times <\/em>Opinion staffer and founder of The Free Press.<\/p>\n

In May, Weiss made Nick Bilton the new executive producer of \u201c60 Minutes.\u201d He has no television experience. He has no management experience, either. <\/p>\n

I remember when CBS News was the most admired news organization in America \u2014 home to Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. They spoke truth to power. Cronkite had the guts to challenge Lyndon Johnson\u2019s war in Vietnam. Murrow had the guts to expose Joe McCarthy and his communist witch hunt. <\/p>\n

Now, CBS News is a disgraced shell of a news organization that last week fired famed \u201c60 Minutes\u201d senior correspondent Scott Pelley, after gutting most of the rest of its team. <\/p>\n

Pelley says Weiss repeatedly interfered in stories \u201c60 Minutes\u201d sought to run. When, for example, the show did a piece on the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Weiss wanted to make \u201cthe protesters look more violent,\u201d and to describe Good \u201cas driving toward<\/em> the officer,\u201d when videos show her driving away from him. <\/p>\n

Pelley concluded that Weiss was trying to put \u201ca thumb on the scale for the President\u2019s version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News. \u2026 a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration. Constantly looking out for the views of the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why was Weiss doing this? Presumably because her boss, David Ellison, wants to s— up to Trump, and hired Weiss to help him \u2014 and she hired Bilton to aid her in doing so. And she fired other staff because they wouldn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

Trump, meanwhile, has chosen Bill Pulte to be acting director of national intelligence. Pulte has no background in national security. He was head of Trump\u2019s federal housing agency. His entire professional experience before that was at companies tied to his family\u2019s wealth. <\/p>\n

Trump chose Pulte not because he knows anything about intelligence but because of his eagerness to advance Trump\u2019s political revenge campaign. He used his housing office to attack Trump\u2019s enemies, leveling accusations of mortgage fraud against people Trump considers political enemies \u2014 Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, and Lisa Cook, a Fed governor Trump has sought to fire. <\/p>\n

Trump has also chosen Todd Blanche to be Attorney General. Blanche\u2019s qualifications? As acting Attorney General, Blanche oversaw the Justice Department\u2019s indictment of former F.B.I. director James B. Comey over a photo he posted on Instagram in May 2025 of seashells on a beach that spelled out \u201c86 47,\u201d which the department characterized as a threat to the president. <\/p>\n

Read more Pathologist reveals hidden dementia warning in Trump\u2019s interview blow up<\/a><\/p>\n

It was the second attempt by Trump\u2019s Justice Department to prosecute Comey, against whom Trump has vowed retribution for Comey\u2019s alleged disloyalty to Trump during Trump\u2019s first administration \u2014 when Comey said Trump pressured him to drop the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, publicly refuted Trump\u2019s allegations that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump, and publicly challenged Trump\u2019s narrative regarding the Russia probe. <\/p>\n

Before becoming Pam Bondi\u2019s attack dog at the Justice Department, Blanche was one of Trump\u2019s personal lawyers. <\/p>\n

Speaking of no relevant experience, I can\u2019t resist pointing out that Lindsey Halligan, who Trump appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had been a White House aide with no experience as a federal prosecutor before she was appointed. Halligan was tasked by Trump with prosecuting James Comey and Letitia James, after her predecessors as U.S. Attorney \u2014 Erik Siebert and Todd Gilbert \u2014 refused to do it. The ploy didn\u2019t work. The federal courts threw out both indictments. <\/p>\n

I could go on \u2014 Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. \u2014 but you get the point. Under Trump, experience, knowledge, and talent are irrelevant. The only <\/em>criterion for getting a top job is blind loyalty to Trump. <\/p>\n

But now this poison has also leached into the private sector, in vital places such as CBS and CBS News \u2014 places where people used to be hired for their experience, knowledge, and talent. Now they\u2019re hired for their willingness to sacrifice their integrity to s— up to Trump. <\/p>\n

This is how dictators poison the organizations a free society depends on. Trump is destroying CBS News by putting s—ups David Ellison and Bari Weiss in charge, just as he\u2019s destroying the Department of Justice and the Office of National Intelligence by putting s—ups Todd Blanche and Bill Pulte in charge. <\/p>\n

Sadly, a dictator will always be able to find people whose blind ambition exceeds their integrity. <\/p>\n

But you and I don\u2019t have to accept any of this. <\/strong><\/p>\n

We can boycott CBS News and its sponsors.<\/p>\n

And we can do everything within our power to get out the vote in the midterm elections whose mail-in ballots start in four months, and put responsible people in charge of Congress who have the courage to stand up to the dictator. <\/p>\n

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more MAGA flips out as Spencer Pratt gets voted off the island<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bari Weiss was hired by CBS to be editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025, when Paramount Skydance acquired CBS. Weiss had no television-news experience. She was a New York Times Opinion staffer and founder of The Free Press.In May, Weiss made Nick Bilton the new executive producer of \u201c60 Minute…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump's flunkies are infecting more than just government - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=1275\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump's flunkies are infecting more than just government - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bari Weiss was hired by CBS to be editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025, when Paramount Skydance acquired CBS. 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