To say that Tuesday June 2 was a busy news day is an understatement. Let’s start with the good news. The primaries went well for Democrats in Iowa. They’re still counting votes in California, so the outcome is less clear but a happy ending is likely.

Repeat after me: Fox talking head and former David Cameron adviser Steve Hilton will not be the next governor of my other home state.

The bad news was OTT terrible but that’s to be expected in the Trump era.

• SCOTUS ruled predictably and cynically in an Alabama redistricting case.
• Trump named an unqualified hack as acting Director of National Intelligence.
• CBS fired Scott Pelley.

Pelley declared war on 60 Minutes management after it conducted a purge last week. With pungent accuracy, the CBS News lifer stated that Barrie Weiss was hired to “murder 60 Minutes.”

Here’s how Pelley described the newsroom bloodbath in his post-firing statement:

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.”

Wreaking havoc and causing chaos and confusion is MAGA’s signature move.

Befitting his stature as one of the most respected people in broadcast news, Pelley criticized Weiss and her creature Nick Bilton in a staff meeting. Pelley did not sneak around and leak his agita and rage to the media. He looked Bilton in the eye and let him have it.

Pelley was so blunt and direct in his dealings with Bilton that the new boss fired him in a whiny and defensive letter:

Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility — enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation — demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress.”

Does Bilton even know what performative means? In its current usage, the word carries a whiff of inauthenticity. There’s nothing stagey or inauthentic about Scott Pelley. He’s a straight shooter who spoke truth to power in the person of Bari Weiss and her cat’s paw Nick Bilton. You say lackey; I say cat’s-paw. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Pro-MAGA news outlets had the audacity to accuse Pelley of rudeness. It’s a breath-taking example of Trumper hypocrisy. One reason I call Trump the Insult Comedian is because of his OTT rudeness, which is genuine not performative.

Scott Pelley was stating the obvious when he accused Bari Weiss of murdering 60 Minutes. There’s no business justification for this move as the show remains a huge money maker for CBS and has expanded its reach online. Pelley says it better than I can:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

 

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

 

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”

In two words: Righteous indignation.

The new ownership of CBS has used the MAGA playbook to destroy the crown jewel of CBS News. They hired an unqualified hack to run CBS News who, in turn, hired another unqualified hack to manage the destruction of 60 Minutes as a credible news outlet.

After he was shitcanned, Pelley levelled some serious allegations against new management:

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

Incompetence and unprofessionalism are also signature MAGA moves. Incompetence is why Project Dictator is crashing and burning. People are sick of MAGA madness and Donald Trump’s shit.

Scott Pelley went down in a blaze of glory. He refused to make nice with the people who came to destroy 60 Minutes. The accusations of selfish grandstanding are absurd. Pelley has always been a team player. He didn’t particularly want to anchor the CBS Evening News from 2011-17 but he did it for the team that Bari Weiss is suffocating with her heavy-handed and inept management style. She wouldn’t know a team player if one bit her in the ass.

Bari Weiss is little more than a glorified hit woman. She sold her soul and her media company for $150 million. As far as I’m concerned, it’s blood money. She can go fuck herself and the same goes for the dim hack she hired to murder 60 Minutes.

Repeat after me: Scott Pelley is a stand up guy.

The last word goes to Mark Knopfler:

PS: This post was finished before Weiss and Pelley resumed their war of words.