Veteran 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley reported on Donald Trump’s efforts to strong-arm some of the country’s top law firms into doing his bidding on Sunday night’s episode of the embattled CBS newsmagazine.
Pelley’s segment pulled no punches in describing Trump’s efforts and reminding viewers that Trump is the “first felon” ever to sit in the Oval Office.
Make no mistake, the only reason we’re seeing this in the media now is because big business is getting hit. Mostly a shot in the foot with tariffs but let’s keep those boycotts up!
Absolutely. This kind of media is owned (literally) by big business investors. I know it’s obvious but it needs to be said plainly, mass media is the mouthpiece of the rich. It’s no coincidence that Musk bought Xitter and Bezos bought Washington Post.
They will only cry alongside us when they’re being hurt. They sure didn’t care until now.
I assume the big boys lost more money from the tariff insanity than they made from getting their next tax cut. Losing money is the only thing they do not tolerate because it hurts them in their inhouse pissing contest on who can be the biggest societal parasite.
This is what every journalist in America needs to be doing right now.
I would argue it’s what every journalist in America should have been doing 8 FUCKING YEARS AGO, but no, they helped create this monster so they could report on it. They are a human/media centipede crossed with an Ouroboros eating it’s own shit. Support independent media, not partisan sources in either direction, they’re ALL compromised by capital.
OK, but this is also what every journalist needs to be doing right now.
(I wanted to “like” this comment, but it was at 69 likes, and I thought that was very nice) ⬆️
Its at 72 now you can upvote it safely
thank you 😔
OH CAUSE ITS THE SEX NUMBER
THAT IS FUCKIN FUNNY MAN WOW
Pretty terrifying honestly.
I’m kind of astonished that even republicans can’t see anything wrong with everything happening. Like conservative ideals are one thing but dismantling the rule of law is a whole other thing.
I’ve lived in several countries and watched conservatives in all of them over half a century. Nothing I have seen has ever changed my view that conservatism is pathological selfishness disguised as a political philosophy. While other political movements agree on making life better for people in general but disagree on how to do it, conservatives indulge their personality disorder, call it politics, and demand to be taken as seriously as those who actually try.
The only reason why Trump’s approval rating has sunk a bit amongst conservatives is that tariffs are directly affecting them. As you said, they are selfishness incarnate.
Well said
And it’s so overwhelmingly male and (usually) white. Though that can sway depending on country. Seems they want to go back to owning slaves. And feel equality is oppression somehow.
Though there is a growing amount of white ladies now I want to see rot in prison.
Uh… What did you think conservatives stood for again? Conservatism has always been about putting wealth in the hands of the few and scapegoating vulnerable people to distract the masses; everything else is camouflage.
I don’t think the majority of conservatives actually want that.
The majority of Republicans are fucking morons that have no idea what is going on in the world and have no desire to so long as they have identified which group they are supposed to hate.
They just want to hate the people who they fear
Because they’re fucking idiots who choose ignorance because thinking is difficult for them
I wish more people understood this. Fear drives them just hate is an easier emotion that they can handle.
What would you say they want, then?
I do suspect there’s a pretty decent sized chunk who bought into that “Republicans are good for the economy” line of bullshit DECADES ago and have just spent the intervening time hell bent on not giving anything political even the tiniest iota of thought. These people still fucking suck, as that basically involves waking up every day and choosing to be a completely uninformed moron rather than spend 5 fucking seconds thinking about something they find uninteresting. So some are hateful bigots and some are just so fucking stupid it’s a minor miracle they’ve survived this long without someone to follow them around covering the outlets and safety pinning mittens to their sleeves. Fuck em both.
Then why did 77 million Republicans vote for Trump and Republicans?
Because their propaganda game is laser focused and extremely well funded. Propaganda works. They convinced half the population that if you like guns and are a Christian you must vote red or the blues will take it all away. It’s almost that simple.
Sure, but that view makes it sound like they are helpless victims in all this. They have access to the internet just like we do. They fall for the propaganda despite all evidence to the contrary and I only see two possibilities that can explain that; they are stupid or they want all that hateful stuff to be true so badly that they choose to shut out everything else. Neither explanation makes them anything other than shitty, selfish people.
Let’s say you have this test. If a few people fail, you can blame them. If half of them fail, you have to blame the teacher or the curriculum
If when you do something to a population, then get consistent results statistically, it’s not fair to blame people for not being outliers
Also, a lot of people are in a bubble when they go online. Maybe they go to their favorite news site, maybe it originates from Facebook, Instagram, tik Tok, even reddit at this point.
Their Internet bubble isn’t the same as yours, and a handful of people are purposely manipulating what people see. They edit Trump’s speech and package it by explaining what he actually meant, and so when they hear “Trump said he’s not sure if he has to uphold the Constitution” they’ve already got it ready to go in their heads “oh, that was out of context, he meant his lawyers are interpreting the constitution”
If you still think like this after a first 4 years term in which Trump already showed his antidemocratic tendencies and another 4 years in which he only attacked his opposed political party doing nothing to find common ground with the other aisle in the interest of the common good, well, I don’t know how to tell you this but you are part of the problem as the 77 millions of people who voted for Trump in the last election.
If you’re unable to burst a bubble like the one surrounding the current GOP you shouldn’t be allowed to vote or express your ideas publicly. You don’t have the mental acuity necessary to form a coherent thought and you should be treated as such, until you prove yourself to have become better than whatever you are today.
It’s time to end this weak ass way to look at people who are actively supporting a fascist regime, stop justifying them and hold them accountable for their choices. Cut all contacts with them, work against them, antagonise them in any way you can. Stop pretending they are good people being lied to: they are bad people looking for someone who will lie to allow themselves to follow their worst instincts and then turn around when everything will be over saying “I was just following orders”
I understand how it happens and I agree that the people making and spreading the propaganda deserve more of the blame than those consuming it. However, I don’t think the consumers get a free pass. We (including myself because I understand that I am not immune to propaganda) all have the responsibility to view information critically and not let our biases and our environments distort our view of reality. In the cases where I fail to do so I am ultimately to blame for that. The same is true for all of us. Blaming manipulators lets people avoid taking responsibility for allowing themselves to be manipulated and that is not going to help us solve this problem.
propaganda game
THIS should be the top comment. I’ve seen friends and family fall for the BS because it was perverse and they never bothered to actually check things out. Republicans have worked overtime propagandizing the population since Nixon. No lie was too outrageous, no dirty trick too vile and eliminating liberal voices was top on their agenda, all backed by big dirty money.
Yeah but you’re upset about the country falling apart. They got what they wanted, they’re “owning the libs” because we’re “so mad about Trump winning.” For a lot of them it’s that simple, they just want to see people upset, it’s fun to them.
A certain philosopher seems spot-on about the nature of our enemy.
JEAN PAUL SARTE
They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.
[The anti-Semite attributes] all or part of his own misfortunes and those of his country to the presence of Jewish elements in the community, … proposes to remedy this state of affairs by depriving the Jews of certain of their rights, by keeping them out of certain economic and social activities, by expelling them from the country, by exterminating all of them …
It is not unusual for people to elect to live a life of passion rather than of reason. But ordinarily they love the objects of passion: women, glory, power, money. Since the anti-Semite has chosen hate, we are forced to conclude that it is the state of passion that he loves.
[The anti-Semite] fears every kind of solitariness… however small his stature, he takes every precaution to make it smaller, lest he stand out from the herd and find himself face to face with himself. He has made himself an anti-Semite because that is something one cannot be alone.
[The anti-Semite is afraid] of himself, of his own consciousness, of his own liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and the world – of everything except the Jews. [He is] a coward who does not want to admit his cowardice to himself.
Anti-Semitism, in short, is fear of the human condition. The anti-Semite is a man who wishes to be a pitiless stone, a furious torrent, a devastating thunderbolt – anything except a man.
Only nine years too late.
Still, hope this marks the start of a trend.
It’s insane, because it’s not some sassy or hyperbolic report. It’s perfectly measured and…logical. A well made report.
I hate 60 minutes but watched that on YouTube. Anything to piss on trumps shallow ego.
Extortion of law firms. What the fucking hell scared these businesses so much? Just stopping federal contracts with them?
And with that threat looming overhead, how do they not have the motivation to quietly resist? You want to talk about respecting the law and fighting back - that’s who needs to do it.
Except they bent the knee anyway. We know they’re just as complicit in the Regimes acts now.
And that’s just one issue.
It’s a shit spot to be in, as basically all of them work cases in federal court. If your lawyers are physically prevented entry to federal property because some orange buffoon bans the entire firm by the stroke of a pen, that law firm is completely impotent and unable to argue in federal cases, even those that don’t end up in a courtroom. Judges chambers, pre-trial motions, informal meetings, etc all are impossible or vastly more difficult.
It was a very targeted and deliberate move to put these firms in a lose:lose scenario - give an absurd amount of pro-bono work to your abuser, or wither and die as your clients are forced to move to another firm:
The orders threatened to bar attorneys from where they work, courthouses and federal agencies and cancel the contracts of law firm clients. For example, an aerospace company could lose its federal contracts if it stayed with the firm. A senior partner at one firm told us the president’s orders were, quote, “diabolical.” “Intended to bankrupt [us].”
Man that’s such a small detail I glossed over, that they can bar them from courthouses.
A lot of cowards in powerful positions.
A lot of PAID cowards in powerful positions.
I never realized until Trump came along how strong the urge to lick boots is in humanity - because if anyone is in exactly the right position with the capabilities and know how it these high-powered firms. And yet they’d rather supplicate themselves? Pathetic.
Lawyers and law firms lean very very heavily on relationships. Far too much honestly. Who your lawyer knows really shouldn’t matter when it comes to legel matters, but often it means more than the law. So being in the sights of the leader of the republican party really reduces the image of a lawyer with connections. Thus it is very very bad for business.
Jesus Christ. What subject, other than abject flattery, is Trump not sensitive about? No matter what they do, any story that’s based remotely on fact is gonna piss that fragile little man off, so why not just have at him?
Glad legacy media still has a few balls left
They hurt TRUMPS FEELINGS? DEPORT THEM!
-Fuck Your Feelings Conservatives!
This is real journalism, which has become increasingly rare these days. Everything else is just PR.
I love this. It’s kind of a rule of the internet that if you tell it to stop doing something it’ll just make everyone more determined. I want to see every group that interacts with the administration be so resolute to give them shit.
It’s called the Streisand effect
60 Minutes finally found their spine? They’ve been barely tolerable for a while now with poor reporting. Looks like getting attacked personally was what it took to hit back with actual accuracy.
That pesky first amendment comes back to bite again!
Good on Pelley.
