from the they-don’t-even-care-if-ANYONE-believes-them dept
You don’t often see blackmail victims extending offers to their blackmailers to sit down and discuss political issues, but that’s what happened when CBS — who recently paid off Trump to settle a lawsuit the broadcaster could have won — invited Kristi Noem to talk out of her perfectly coiffed ass for most of an hour last Sunday.
Of course, being graciously hosted by an entity that recently got thugged into submission by the burgeoning autocracy Noem has chosen to enable didn’t pass without comment. All the graciousness was on behalf of CBS News and Face the Nation host Ed O’Keefe. All the usual vile hatefulness belonged to Kristi Noem, who immediately went to Where The Nazi Things Are® to complain about having only some of her lies removed by CBS before the interview went live:
If you can’t see the embedded screenshot (or would rather not actually have to lay your eyes on the liar), here’s the directly quoted crux of Noem’s illegitimate complaint:
This morning, I joined CBS to report the facts about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Instead, CBS shamefully edited the interview to whitewash the truth about this MS-13 gang member and the threat he poses to American public safety.
What’s not acknowledged in this X post is that CBS had already posted the full transcript — as well as the full recording — before Noem decided to go live with her complaint.
Here’s what was removed from the interview that bothered Noem so much she felt the need to rile the most easily riled members of the Red Army MAGA nation:
This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who’s a wife beater, and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors. And even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off, he was so sick in what he was doing and how he was treating small children. So he needs to never be in the United States of America, and our administration is making sure we’re doing all that we can to bring him to justice.
This was Noem’s response to one of a few questions about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been the government’s plaything for months, starting with his exile to El Salvador’s torture prison, continuing through his being the centerpiece of the DOJ’s “fuck the courts” efforts to shield Trump’s mass deportation program from anything and everything, including long-established constitutional rights.
It’s only when the administration was forced to bring Abrego Garcia back that it started pretending he was some sort of ultra-dangerous human trafficker. Even that case is so questionable the DOJ has gone past the normal bullshit of the “trial tax” to present Abrego Garcia with two untenable options: plead guilty to a bunch of exaggerated charges and get deported to Costa Rica once the prison sentence is served, or proceed to trial and get deported to Uganda just for pissing the government off.
But back to Noem and her performative complaints. First off, interviews are always edited for time and clarity. This isn’t something new, nor is it something that only Trump officials have to deal with.
Second — and much more importantly — CBS News (its payoff to Trump notwithstanding) is not a propaganda arm of the current administration. It is a journalistic entity that maintains a First Amendment-protected right to curate its own output.
Even more importantly than that last part, this is exactly the sort of thing more news agencies should be doing, especially when every major or minor figure in the Trump administration feels comfortable lying to the public about pretty much everything. These people can spout their lies. No one’s under any obligation to give them a platform, as Greg Sargent points out in his article for The New Republic (emphasis in the original):
Responding to Noem, a CBS spokesperson says the full interview was posted on line, and notes that cuts were made to fit the segment into a limited time-slot. As it happens, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this edit, and it’s fairly common for networks to do this with lengthy interviews.
But it’s worth going further than this spokesperson did: Not airing footage of Noem’s lies and smears unchallenged was, journalistically speaking, the correct thing to do. CBS News is under no obligation to air them, and arguably should not have. If anything, CBS bent over backward to let her have her say, posting full video of the interview online, including her making those charges—which, again, are unproven—with no serious rebuttal.
That’s something CBS News has acknowledged as tacitly as possible. That it’s buried under the full transcript of Noem’s constant lies, exaggerations, and unproven claims doesn’t really matter. The fact that this was appended to the interview Noem sought to use as another example of unfairness to the most powerful people in the world speaks volumes on its own, even if you have to scroll a bit to… um… hear it.
*Editor’s note: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been charged with two counts of human smuggling and has pleaded not guilty. He is currently in ICE detention pending trial. He has not been charged with any counts related to child abuse.
That response shows yet another reason why CBS News was right to remove that bit of Noem’s spew from the televised version: none of these allegations have been proven in court and some of what’s alleged hasn’t even been alleged by the DOJ in its court filings.
To simplify things a bit (perhaps even a bit too much!), Noem is arguably engaged in slander when she says things like “someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors” about Abrego Garcia. While CBS News couldn’t be held liable for things Noem said, it certainly isn’t going to take any chances when it has already demonstrated it’s kind of a soft target when it comes to this kind of litigation. If nothing else, removing Noem’s unproven (and un-alleged, at least officially!) statements about Abrego Garcia lowers the number of potential headaches, give or take a few thousand asshats who believe anything this administration tells them.
CBS did the right thing here, even if it may not have done it intentionally. It muted claims about someone this administration desperately needs to vilify to justify its bigoted ejection of anyone with less-than-white skin from this country. Noem’s anger over this demonstrates yet again that everyone of these ultra-privileged motherfuckers thinks every private citizen works for them, rather than the other way around.
Filed Under: abrego garcia, bullshit, dhs, ice, kilmar abrego garcia, kristi noem, trump administration
Companies: cbs, cbs news, paramount
