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1000 results for “Not_AI”
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Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the language —🔗 Explore the project: https://sonetobot.vercel.app
🐘 Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Open source coming soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
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Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the language —🔗 Explore the project: https://sonetobot.vercel.app
🐘 Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Open source coming soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the language —🔗 Explore the project: https://sonetobot.vercel.app
🐘 Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Open source coming soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the language —🔗 Explore the project: https://sonetobot.vercel.app
🐘 Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Open source coming soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the language —🔗 Explore the project: https://sonetobot.vercel.app
🐘 Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Open source coming soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
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🤖✨ Meet SonetoBot — a small project with a big heart for Spanish poetry!
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the languageThis is the bot that you were looking for
Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.
Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Coming open source soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
🤖✨ Meet SonetoBot — a small project with a big heart for Spanish poetry!
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the languageThis is the bot that you were looking for
Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.
Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Coming open source soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
🤖✨ Meet SonetoBot — a small project with a big heart for Spanish poetry!
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the languageThis is the bot that you were looking for
Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.
Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Coming open source soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
🤖✨ Meet SonetoBot — a small project with a big heart for Spanish poetry!
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the languageThis is the bot that you were looking for
Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.
Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Coming open source soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
-
🤖✨ Meet SonetoBot — a small project with a big heart for Spanish poetry!
Each day, SonetoBot shares a hand-picked poem in Spanish, scraped from the web (not AI-generated!) to celebrate the richness and beauty of our literary heritage.
Whether you're:
📖 a poetry lover,
🌍 exploring Hispanic culture,
🎓 teaching Spanish lit, or
🗣️ learning the languageThis is the bot that you were looking for
Follow @sonetobot to discover a new poem every day.
Built with ❤️ using Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase.
(Coming open source soon!)#Poesía #Literatura #SpanishPoetry #NoAI #OpenSource #Mastodon
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We keep worrying about AI doing something evil. Which it might, but right now, there’s a risk in the plumbing supporting it. Three vulnerabilities in LangChain and LangGraph, path traversal, unsafe deserialization, SQL injection. Not AI-specific attacks. They’re not novel nor sophisticated but these are the kinds of bugs we've been patching since the late '90s. One of them scored a severity of 9.3 out of 10. "The biggest threat to your enterprise AI data might not be as complex as you think." Remember that you're building AI on top of frameworks you didn't write, can't fully audit, and update whenever it's convenient. That's the actual problem.
🔐 Path traversal lets attackers read arbitrary files from the host system, including credentials
🔑 Unsafe deserialization exposes API keys and environment variables at runtime
🗄️ SQL injection in the checkpointing layer leaks conversation history from your AI agentsAll three are fixed now. But "fixed" only matters if you've actually applied the patches across every integration. Most organizations haven't.
The lesson isn't about AI security. It's that AI doesn't change what good security engineering looks like. Input validation, parameterized queries, strict path sandboxing. This is stuff your dev team learned before ChatGPT existed.
If you're deploying AI pipelines and you haven't done a security review of the frameworks underneath them, you're not running an AI strategy. You're running a trust exercise.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/4151814/langchain-path-traversal-bug-adds-to-input-validation-woes-in-ai-pipelines.html
#CyberSecurity #AIRisk #AppSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec -
We keep worrying about AI doing something evil. Which it might, but right now, there’s a risk in the plumbing supporting it. Three vulnerabilities in LangChain and LangGraph, path traversal, unsafe deserialization, SQL injection. Not AI-specific attacks. They’re not novel nor sophisticated but these are the kinds of bugs we've been patching since the late '90s. One of them scored a severity of 9.3 out of 10. "The biggest threat to your enterprise AI data might not be as complex as you think." Remember that you're building AI on top of frameworks you didn't write, can't fully audit, and update whenever it's convenient. That's the actual problem.
🔐 Path traversal lets attackers read arbitrary files from the host system, including credentials
🔑 Unsafe deserialization exposes API keys and environment variables at runtime
🗄️ SQL injection in the checkpointing layer leaks conversation history from your AI agentsAll three are fixed now. But "fixed" only matters if you've actually applied the patches across every integration. Most organizations haven't.
The lesson isn't about AI security. It's that AI doesn't change what good security engineering looks like. Input validation, parameterized queries, strict path sandboxing. This is stuff your dev team learned before ChatGPT existed.
If you're deploying AI pipelines and you haven't done a security review of the frameworks underneath them, you're not running an AI strategy. You're running a trust exercise.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/4151814/langchain-path-traversal-bug-adds-to-input-validation-woes-in-ai-pipelines.html
#CyberSecurity #AIRisk #AppSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec -
We keep worrying about AI doing something evil. Which it might, but right now, there’s a risk in the plumbing supporting it. Three vulnerabilities in LangChain and LangGraph, path traversal, unsafe deserialization, SQL injection. Not AI-specific attacks. They’re not novel nor sophisticated but these are the kinds of bugs we've been patching since the late '90s. One of them scored a severity of 9.3 out of 10. "The biggest threat to your enterprise AI data might not be as complex as you think." Remember that you're building AI on top of frameworks you didn't write, can't fully audit, and update whenever it's convenient. That's the actual problem.
🔐 Path traversal lets attackers read arbitrary files from the host system, including credentials
🔑 Unsafe deserialization exposes API keys and environment variables at runtime
🗄️ SQL injection in the checkpointing layer leaks conversation history from your AI agentsAll three are fixed now. But "fixed" only matters if you've actually applied the patches across every integration. Most organizations haven't.
The lesson isn't about AI security. It's that AI doesn't change what good security engineering looks like. Input validation, parameterized queries, strict path sandboxing. This is stuff your dev team learned before ChatGPT existed.
If you're deploying AI pipelines and you haven't done a security review of the frameworks underneath them, you're not running an AI strategy. You're running a trust exercise.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/4151814/langchain-path-traversal-bug-adds-to-input-validation-woes-in-ai-pipelines.html
#CyberSecurity #AIRisk #AppSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec -
We keep worrying about AI doing something evil. Which it might, but right now, there’s a risk in the plumbing supporting it. Three vulnerabilities in LangChain and LangGraph, path traversal, unsafe deserialization, SQL injection. Not AI-specific attacks. They’re not novel nor sophisticated but these are the kinds of bugs we've been patching since the late '90s. One of them scored a severity of 9.3 out of 10. "The biggest threat to your enterprise AI data might not be as complex as you think." Remember that you're building AI on top of frameworks you didn't write, can't fully audit, and update whenever it's convenient. That's the actual problem.
🔐 Path traversal lets attackers read arbitrary files from the host system, including credentials
🔑 Unsafe deserialization exposes API keys and environment variables at runtime
🗄️ SQL injection in the checkpointing layer leaks conversation history from your AI agentsAll three are fixed now. But "fixed" only matters if you've actually applied the patches across every integration. Most organizations haven't.
The lesson isn't about AI security. It's that AI doesn't change what good security engineering looks like. Input validation, parameterized queries, strict path sandboxing. This is stuff your dev team learned before ChatGPT existed.
If you're deploying AI pipelines and you haven't done a security review of the frameworks underneath them, you're not running an AI strategy. You're running a trust exercise.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/4151814/langchain-path-traversal-bug-adds-to-input-validation-woes-in-ai-pipelines.html
#CyberSecurity #AIRisk #AppSec #security #privacy #cloud #infosec -
‘Smokey’ one of the 4 Great Grey Owls at Suffolk Owl Sanctuary, decided yesterday that he was having too much fun and didn’t want to go back to his aviary…….sharp left!! 🦉📸©️
#SuffolkOwlSanctuary #raptorhospital #owls #owl #birdsofmastodon #birds #birdphotography #nikon ##originalphotography so not AI !! -
How to Build a Cohesive Visual Identity for Your Brand (Even If You’re Not a Designer)
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A memorable brand doesn’t just happen by accident. It is meticulously crafted, piece by piece. Central to this craft is a cohesive visual identity, the silent ambassador that speaks volumes before a single word is read. This identity is the collection of all visual elements—from the logo and color scheme to the typography and imagery—that work together to represent the brand’s essence. When executed correctly, a cohesive visual identity builds immediate recognition and fosters a deep sense of trust. It tells a story, evokes emotion, and makes a promise to the customer.
Think about the brands you love. Their visual language is so distinct that you could recognize it from a single color or font. This guide is for the entrepreneur, the marketer, and the creator who understands this power but doesn’t have a design background. It will walk you through building a powerful visual presence from the ground up.
Why a Cohesive Visual Identity Is Your Greatest Asset
A strong visual presence is more than just looking good; it’s a fundamental business strategy. Consistency across all platforms, from your website to your social media profiles and packaging, creates a seamless and professional experience. Subsequently, this professionalism builds credibility. When a customer sees that every detail is thoughtfully aligned, they subconsciously trust that your product or service will be just as meticulous.
Furthermore, this consistency is the key to brand recognition. Humans are visual creatures. We process images significantly faster than text. As a result, a cohesive visual identity makes your brand instantly identifiable in a crowded marketplace. This immediate recall is invaluable. It’s the difference between being scrolled past and being stopped for. Ultimately, a powerful visual brand identity connects with people on an emotional level, turning passive viewers into loyal advocates. What feeling do you want your brand to evoke?
Step 1: Discover Your Brand’s True Essence
Before choosing a single color or font, one must first look inward. A visual identity without a soul is just a collection of pretty elements. It lacks direction and purpose. Therefore, the first and most critical step is to define your brand’s essence. This is the foundation upon which every visual decision will rest.
Ask yourself some fundamental questions.
- What is your mission? Beyond making money, what is the core purpose of your brand? What problem do you solve for your customers?
- What are your values? List three to five core values that guide your business. Are you innovative, traditional, playful, or luxurious? These words will become your creative compass.
- Who is your audience? Get specific. Go beyond simple demographics. What are their aspirations, their pain points, and their passions? A visual identity designed for a 22-year-old tech entrepreneur will look very different from one for a 55-year-old gardening enthusiast.
- What is your brand’s personality or tone of voice? If your brand were a person, how would it speak? Would it be witty and informal, or authoritative and formal? This personality directly informs your visual choices.
Answering these questions provides the strategic brief for your visual brand. This exercise ensures that your cohesive visual identity is not just aesthetically pleasing but also strategically sound and authentically you.
Step 2: Choose a Purposeful Brand Color Palette
Color is a language of emotion. The colors you choose will be one of the most powerful and recognizable elements of your brand. They set the mood and influence perception in an instant. For this reason, selecting a brand color palette should be a deliberate process, rooted in the brand essence you just defined.
Start by exploring color psychology. For example:
- Blue often conveys trust, stability, and professionalism. It’s a favorite in tech and finance.
- Red signals passion, excitement, and urgency. It’s used to grab attention.
- Green is associated with nature, growth, and health. It’s perfect for wellness or eco-friendly brands.
- Yellow evokes optimism, clarity, and warmth.
- Black communicates sophistication, power, and luxury.
However, these are not strict rules. Context and culture matter. A bright, playful yellow feels very different from a muted, earthy ochre. Your goal is to find a palette that reflects your brand’s specific personality. Excellent tools like Coolors and Adobe Color can help you generate beautiful, harmonious palettes. Start with one or two primary colors that represent your core values, and then add two to three secondary and accent colors for flexibility in your designs. This structure is essential for maintaining a cohesive visual identity across different applications. If you want to learn more about this topic, feel free to take a look at our article about how to find the perfect color palette for your brand.
Step 3: Select Typography That Finds Your Voice
If colors set the mood, typography gives your brand its voice. The fonts you choose can make your brand feel modern and clean, classic and elegant, or friendly and approachable. Choosing brand typography is a crucial step in building your visual identity. A thoughtful font selection can significantly enhance readability and personality.
Generally, fonts fall into a few main categories:
- Serif Fonts: These have small “feet” or lines attached to the main strokes of the letters. They often feel traditional, reliable, and sophisticated. Think Times New Roman or Georgia.
- Sans-Serif Fonts: Lacking the “feet,” these fonts look clean, modern, and straightforward. Helvetica, Arial, and Open Sans are popular examples. They are excellent for digital screens.
- Script Fonts: These mimic cursive handwriting and can feel elegant, personal, or playful. They work best for accents or logos, not for long paragraphs of text.
- Display Fonts: This is a broad category of decorative fonts best used for headlines to make a bold statement.
For a balanced and cohesive visual identity, a good practice is to choose two fonts: one for headlines (a display or bold serif/sans-serif) and one for body text (a clean, readable serif or sans-serif). Resources like Google Fonts offer a vast library of free, high-quality fonts, while platforms such as MyFonts or Creative Market provide premium typefaces, and Adobe Fonts is the ideal option for those with a Creative Cloud subscription. When you find a pairing you love, stick to it. Consistency is key. Check out this handpicked selection of the 5 best branding fonts in 2025.
TT Biersal Font Family TypeType You can purchase the typeface at Creative MarketStep 4: Use Smart Templates to Ensure Consistency
Here is where the non-designer can truly shine. You have defined your essence, chosen your colors, and selected your fonts. Now, how do you apply this cohesive visual identity consistently across every single touchpoint without hiring a designer for every task? The answer is templates.
Templates are your secret weapon for brand consistency. They are pre-designed files where you can easily plug in your own content while the core visual structure remains intact. This ensures every social media post, presentation, or newsletter looks like it came from the same brand.
Look for template resources that align with your needs:
- Social Media: Tools like Canva or Adobe Express offer thousands of templates for Instagram, Facebook, and more. Customize a set of them with your brand’s colors, fonts, and logo.
- Documents & Presentations: Create branded templates in Microsoft Word or Google Docs for invoices and reports. Likewise, build a master slide deck in PowerPoint or Google Slides for all your presentations.
- Creative Marketplaces: Websites like Creative Market sell professional “brand kits” or “social media kits” that include a suite of coordinated templates designed by professionals.
Using templates saves an immense amount of time. More importantly, it creates a visual system that reinforces your brand identity with every piece of content you publish.
Step 5: Create a Brand Style Guide for a Cohesive Visual Identity
A brand style guide is the single source of truth for your visual identity. It’s a document that outlines all your visual rules, ensuring that anyone working on your brand—whether it’s you, a future employee, or a freelancer—can apply the identity correctly. Creating a brand style guide is the ultimate step in formalizing your cohesive visual identity.
Your style guide doesn’t need to be a hundred pages long. A simple one-page document is often enough to start. It should include:
- Logo Usage: Show your primary logo, any secondary versions, and an icon. Specify clear space rules (how much room to leave around it) and show examples of incorrect usage (e.g., stretching or changing its color).
- Color Palette: Display your primary and secondary colors. Importantly, include their specific color codes (HEX for web, RGB for digital screens, and CMYK for print).
- Typography: Name your headline and body fonts. Specify their sizes, weights (e.g., bold, regular), and when to use each.
- Imagery Style: Briefly describe the type of photography or illustration that fits your brand. Is it bright and airy, or dark and moody? Should it feature people or products? Including a few sample images helps communicate the vibe.
This guide acts as a reference point, eliminating guesswork and empowering consistency. On platforms like Adobe Stock, Envato Elements, or Creative Market, you can find plenty of downloadable, fully customizable brand style guide templates to help you get started on this crucial document.
Adobe InDesign Brand Guidelines Presentation Template by GraphicArtist You can download this template from Adobe StockBonus: AI Tools to Accelerate Your Creative Process
Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept; it’s a practical tool that can significantly speed up the process of building a visual identity. While AI can’t replace the strategic thinking of defining your brand essence, it can be a powerful assistant for visual exploration.
- Mood Boarding & Ideation: Use AI image generators like Midjourney or Adobe Firefly to create visual mood boards. For example, you could prompt it with “mood board for a sustainable coffee brand with a minimalist and earthy feel” to get instant visual inspiration.
- Brainstorming: If you’re stuck on your brand’s personality, you can use a tool like ChatGPT to brainstorm. Try asking WE AND THE COLOR’s Graphic Design AI Bot, “Give me 10 personality words for a brand that is trustworthy, innovative, and customer-focused.”
- Generating Assets: Tools like Adobe Firefly can generate unique images or graphic elements based on your text descriptions, which can be useful for social media content or blog post illustrations that perfectly match your desired style.
These tools are best used for inspiration and rapid prototyping. They can help you visualize ideas quickly, making the creative journey more efficient and accessible, even if you’re not a designer.
Building a cohesive visual identity is a journey, not a destination. Your brand is a living entity that will grow and evolve, and its visual expression should have the flexibility to do so as well. Do not aim for perfection from day one. Instead, aim for a strong, well-reasoned foundation. Use the steps outlined here to create an identity that feels authentic to you and connects with your audience right now.
Then, listen and observe. Pay attention to feedback. See what resonates. As your business grows and your understanding of your market deepens, you may find the need to refine a color, update a font, or refresh your imagery. That is a sign of a healthy, responsive brand. Your visual identity is a powerful tool. Use it, refine it, and let it grow with you.
#brand #brandDesign #brandIdentity #branding #design #graphicDesign #howTo #learn #visualIdentity
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the characters however are drawn by me so don’t use it. Especially not AI)(Background is done by A-Short-Potato on DeviantArt, the characters however are drawn by me so don’t use it. Especially not AI)
[BNHA OC] Rachel
Tammin Mikuriya
Happy Halloween guys✌️
Tammin dressed at Joker from Persona 5
Rachel dressed as Plumeria from pokemon (didn’t draw the tattoos cause it’s still a taboo thing in Japan)
Persona 5 Joker: Atlus
Rachel: me
Tammin Mikuriya: me
MHA: Kohei Horikoshi
Details opzoeken
415 / 5.000
Vertaalresultaten
Vertaalresultaat
(背景は DeviantArt の A-Short-Potato が担当しました。ただし、キャラクターは私が描いたものなので使用しないでください。特に AI ではありません)
[BNHA OC] レイチェル
御厨たまみん
ハッピーハロウィン✌️
ペルソナ5のジョーカーに扮したタミン
ポケモンのプルメリアに扮したレイチェル（日本ではまだタブーなのでタトゥーは描きませんでした）
ペルソナ5 ジョーカー：アトラス
レイチェル：私
御厨たみん：私
MHA：堀越耕平
#bnhaoc #mhaoc #bnhaoriginalcharacter #mhaoriginalcharacter #fanfiction #bokunoheroacademiaoc #myheroacademia #myheroacademiaoc #myheroacadamiaoriginalcharacter #oc #originalcharacter #anime #animegirl #digitalart #realart #illustration #fanmade #fanmadechracater #animeoc -
the characters however are drawn by me so don’t use it. Especially not AI)(Background is done by A-Short-Potato on DeviantArt, the characters however are drawn by me so don’t use it. Especially not AI)
[BNHA OC] Rachel
Tammin Mikuriya
Happy Halloween guys✌️
Tammin dressed at Joker from Persona 5
Rachel dressed as Plumeria from pokemon (didn’t draw the tattoos cause it’s still a taboo thing in Japan)
Persona 5 Joker: Atlus
Rachel: me
Tammin Mikuriya: me
MHA: Kohei Horikoshi
Details opzoeken
415 / 5.000
Vertaalresultaten
Vertaalresultaat
(背景は DeviantArt の A-Short-Potato が担当しました。ただし、キャラクターは私が描いたものなので使用しないでください。特に AI ではありません)
[BNHA OC] レイチェル
御厨たまみん
ハッピーハロウィン✌️
ペルソナ5のジョーカーに扮したタミン
ポケモンのプルメリアに扮したレイチェル（日本ではまだタブーなのでタトゥーは描きませんでした）
ペルソナ5 ジョーカー：アトラス
レイチェル：私
御厨たみん：私
MHA：堀越耕平
#bnhaoc #mhaoc #bnhaoriginalcharacter #mhaoriginalcharacter #fanfiction #bokunoheroacademiaoc #myheroacademia #myheroacademiaoc #myheroacadamiaoriginalcharacter #oc #originalcharacter #anime #animegirl #digitalart #realart #illustration #fanmade #fanmadechracater #animeoc -
This week's Hold That Thought newsletter, features ideas from Adam Curtis, Dr. Nick Walker, Margaret Mead and more. This is one of my favourites:
From Autism in the Stone Age to our not-AI future…
https://insight.witten.kim/posts/the-only-thing-that-ever-has
#ai #hypernormalisation #autism #neuroqueer #everthingcrisis #holdthatThought #thoughts
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This week's Hold That Thought newsletter, features ideas from Adam Curtis, Dr. Nick Walker, Margaret Mead and more. This is one of my favourites:
From Autism in the Stone Age to our not-AI future…
https://insight.witten.kim/posts/the-only-thing-that-ever-has
#ai #hypernormalisation #autism #neuroqueer #everthingcrisis #holdthatThought #thoughts
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This week's Hold That Thought newsletter, features ideas from Adam Curtis, Dr. Nick Walker, Margaret Mead and more. This is one of my favourites:
From Autism in the Stone Age to our not-AI future…
https://insight.witten.kim/posts/the-only-thing-that-ever-has
#ai #hypernormalisation #autism #neuroqueer #everthingcrisis #holdthatThought #thoughts
-
This week's Hold That Thought newsletter, features ideas from Adam Curtis, Dr. Nick Walker, Margaret Mead and more. This is one of my favourites:
From Autism in the Stone Age to our not-AI future…
https://insight.witten.kim/posts/the-only-thing-that-ever-has
#ai #hypernormalisation #autism #neuroqueer #everthingcrisis #holdthatThought #thoughts
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When you have visitors, do you put on clothes or do they undress?
I put clothes on because it is the standard thing to do. I do not aim to be creepy or make people uncomfortable.
Reposted from: https://ask.absturztau.be/@Siinamon/a/113088018149927292
#fragsturztaube -
Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It
“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)
I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.
I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.
I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.
This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”
Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.
And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.
By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.
But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.
They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.
NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.
NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–
NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.
Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.
`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long. Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.
We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.
If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.
Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.
It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’
Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.
I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:
- “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
- “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
- “Why won’t Putin end this war?
- “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
- “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”
Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?
But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.
At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).
But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.
There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:
- “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
- “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
- “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
- “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
- “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
- “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
- “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
- “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
- “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
- “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
- “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
- “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.
Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.
CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”
Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.
The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.
- He falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
- He falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
- He falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
- He falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
- He falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
- He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).
And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.
I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it. I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.
The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.
Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.
The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.
While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.
At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.
During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.
“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.
The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.
Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post.
“And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow! I’m old!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #JohnBuss #NorahODonnell #SixtyMinutes #TalesOfATeenageReporter #TheLegacyMediaSucks #WalterCronkite
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Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It
“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)
I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.
I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.
I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.
This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”
Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.
And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.
By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.
But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.
They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.
NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.
NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–
NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.
Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.
`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long. Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.
We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.
If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.
Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.
It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’
Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.
I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:
- “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
- “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
- “Why won’t Putin end this war?
- “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
- “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”
Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?
But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.
At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).
But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.
There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:
- “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
- “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
- “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
- “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
- “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
- “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
- “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
- “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
- “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
- “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
- “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
- “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.
Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.
CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”
Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.
The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.
- He falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
- He falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
- He falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
- He falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
- He falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
- He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).
And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.
I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it. I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.
The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.
Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.
The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.
While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.
At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.
During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.
“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.
The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.
Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post. “And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow! I’m old!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #JohnBuss #NorahODonnell #SixtyMinutes #TalesOfATeenageReporter #TheLegacyMediaSucks #WalterCronkite
-
Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It
“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)
I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.
I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.
I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.
This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”
Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.
And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.
By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.
But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.
They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.
NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.
NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–
NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.
Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.
`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long. Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.
We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.
If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.
Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.
It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’
Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.
I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:
- “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
- “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
- “Why won’t Putin end this war?
- “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
- “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”
Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?
But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.
At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).
But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.
There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:
- “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
- “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
- “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
- “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
- “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
- “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
- “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
- “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
- “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
- “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
- “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
- “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.
Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.
CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”
Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.
The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.
- He falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
- He falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
- He falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
- He falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
- He falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
- He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).
And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.
I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it. I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.
The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.
Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.
The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.
While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.
At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.
During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.
“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.
The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.
Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post.
“And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow! I’m old!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #JohnBuss #NorahODonnell #SixtyMinutes #TalesOfATeenageReporter #TheLegacyMediaSucks #WalterCronkite
-
Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It
“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)
I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.
I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.
I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.
This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”
Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.
And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.
By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.
But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.
They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.
NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.
NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–
NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.
Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.
`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long. Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.
We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.
If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.
Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.
It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’
Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.
I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:
- “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
- “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
- “Why won’t Putin end this war?
- “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
- “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”
Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?
But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.
At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).
But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.
There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:
- “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
- “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
- “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
- “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
- “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
- “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
- “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
- “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
- “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
- “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
- “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
- “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
- “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.
Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.
CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”
Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.
The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.
- He falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
- He falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
- He falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
- He falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
- He falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
- He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).
And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.
I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it. I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.
The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.
Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.
The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.
While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.
At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.
During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.
“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”
During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.
The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.
Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post. “And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow! I’m old!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968 #JohnBuss #NorahODonnell #SixtyMinutes #TalesOfATeenageReporter #TheLegacyMediaSucks #WalterCronkite
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Blood thinner Apixaban given as prevention (not treatment) vs placebo to >400 #COVID pts leaving hospital did not ⬇️ rehospitalization.
Awaiting full trial results
bit.ly/3uhlHQCThis HEAL study
📍Micro-clots remain a leading theory as to why millions suffer #LongCovid
📍These excellent investigators were not testing that theory but rather the idea that preventing overt clotting might help
📍This study did not aim to test neuro cognitive benefits of anticoagulants. -
Blood thinner Apixaban given as prevention (not treatment) vs placebo to >400 #COVID pts leaving hospital did not ⬇️ rehospitalization.
Awaiting full trial results
bit.ly/3uhlHQCThis HEAL study
📍Micro-clots remain a leading theory as to why millions suffer #LongCovid
📍These excellent investigators were not testing that theory but rather the idea that preventing overt clotting might help
📍This study did not aim to test neuro cognitive benefits of anticoagulants. -
Kentucky Lantern: Editor’s Notebook: Our work is produced by real journalists, not AI bots. “Yes, as the tech bros like to tell us, artificial intelligence is already here, and it ranges from the very funny (see the 200 commenters arguing about whether “Game of Thrones” was really filmed at the Kentucky Castle and how to pronounce “Versailles”) to the sinister (the ad about Massie was […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/19/editors-notebook-our-work-is-produced-by-real-journalists-not-ai-bots-kentucky-lantern/