Better in their words…

Progs melt down as sacred cows fall and comedians get canceled; TSA hints at sanity; and the Deep State war goes hot as DNI Tulsi drops a viral thread that blows the lid off everything.

Source: POTBOILER ☙ Saturday, July 19, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a tragic story headlined, “Senate Approves Trump’s Bid to Cancel Foreign Aid and Funds for NPR and PBS Stations.” The sub-headline explained, “President Trump’s request to claw back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending passed.” Fortunately, I have been assured, repeatedly and often, that NPR survives just fine on listener donations, which avalanche the “non-partisan” network twice annually in exchange for paper and plastic-free tote bags that are handy for pro-environment shopping as long as you never put any chicken in there.

You can’t really tell much about NPR’s financial independence from the unhinged reaction on BlueSky. Here’s one very mild example:

Defunding NPR will kill people, the Narrative explained, because something something about weather alerts in rural areas. In other words, everybody except NPR executives has finally surrendered the pathetic story about how NPR and PBS are not woke, anti-American sellouts. Now, it’s just: We need it for the weather.

Um. By the way. We’re already paying for rural weather alerts. You can sign up for them, right on your phone, at the National Weather Service website. Just saying. Since the Times didn’t.

There is a simple solution. NPR’s liberal listeners should buy more tote bags and logo mugs. It’s that simple. Conservatives fund their media without anyfederal funding. You can do it! Don’t lose hope. Indeed, one Seattle station raised nearly $1.5 million on Friday— even before the cuts. So.

The bill, once it has passed by the House and been signed into law, will confirm the DOGE cuts already attempted by the Administration that are currently tied up in court cases. Helpfully, since this kind of bill relates to the budget, it couldn’t be filibustered in the Senate. Corporate media cried that Congress was “abdicating its spending power” to the Executive Branch. But come on. It’s only two programs.

Elections have consequences (or so I was told after Biden infested the office).

Personally, I tried listening, several times, but I can’t stand the smug leftist propaganda for more than a few minutes. NPR’s unfair advantage over its competitors is over.

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Fans react! The next delicious Times story ran late this week under the headline, “Fans React to Colbert ‘Late Show’ Cancellation With Puzzlement and Anger.” This one was even less amusing to progressives, generating even more overheated stories than NPR’s defunding, which is saying a lot.

On Thursday, Mr. Colbert announced live that CBS will close the curtain on The Late Show as of May 2026. The Late Show’s death sentence dropped like a piano from a Brooklyn tenement window, smashing not just Stephen Colbert’s career but a key cultural organ for post-Obama progressives.

According to the Times, fans flooded social media with “puzzlement and anger”— a journalistic admission that no one’s laughing anymore. By 2025, Colbert had long since completed his transformation from court jester to court stenographer, turning nightly monologues into moralizing lectures and bizarre medical rants wrapped in nervous applause lines.

Now, it’s curtains.

Colbert’s unfunny announcement arrived Thursday during a tearful backstage moment captured on his staff’s phones, a digital Irish wake already circulating among the last few loyal viewers. CBS cited a “strategic realignment.” In other words, “we’re bleeding money and TikTokers think this format is fossilized.” It was another scalp in this week’s wave of legacy media bloodletting, and unlike NPR’s defunding (which at least came with a political scapegoat), this one cut closer to the bone: Colbert was supposed to be the left’s comedic velvet hammer, arrogantly confirming liberal talking points with snide sarcasm and mocking conservatives whenever he got the chance.

Now, he’s out. Colbert, his shrinking fan base, and corporate media all cried foul, suspecting it was really because Stephen recently criticized Paramount (CBS’s owner) for its $16 million settlement with President Trump. Bernie Sanders tweeted, “Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late-night host, slams the settlement. Days later, he’s fired.” Sanders continued, asking, “Do I think this is a coincidence? NO.”

Maybe that is what happened. Look, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but criticizing your boss —at work!— is not a brilliant career move. Try telling the Evil Queen she looks bloated in her dress and see how it works out for you. Oh honey, you can’t trust that mirror, it’s too flatter— gah!

Colbert’s fall marks something deeper than a lineup shuffle. Nothing like this happened back during Trump 1.0, when legacy media doubled down and late-night became occupational therapy for The Resistance. Until now, Colbert was untouchable— a jocular oracle in a suit, cloaked in ratings and virtue-signaling righteousness. But Trump’s return hasn’t just realigned politics; it is somehow rewriting the whole cultural pecking order.

Unlike Trump’s first term, this time the culture shift feels more permanent. Corporate giants like CBS and Paramount aren’t just trimming costs. They’re shedding skins. They are no longer placating the BlueSky mobs or tithing the progressive orthodoxy. The media priesthood isn’t just being temporarily sidelined; it’s being defrocked. Colbert wasn’t really canceled for criticizing his boss. He was canceled because the whole progressive media empire is cracking like stained glass under a newly risen sun.

Don’t worry about Stephen. The funnyman can take his “truthiness” schtick to podcasting. I’m sure he’ll be fine.

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Something bizarre happened when we went through TSA security at the airport on Wednesday. The agent told me to use separate buckets, get everything out of my pockets, and snapped you don’t have to take your shoes off. He was annoyed when I asked him to repeat the last part. It became clearer after I read the Toronto Sun’s story on Thursday, headlined, “After years of tough rules on liquids and footwear, U.S. air travel may be on the cusp of a new era.”

Oh, thank Heavens.

Maybe you already knew about the change, which Secretary Kristi Noem announced a couple weeks ago. If so, it was despite corporate media’s grave-like silence.

I guess this means I can finally put away my airport Crocs and wear real shoes to the airport again. It’s only been twenty years.

Next up: TSA is aiming at the 3-oz liquid limit. “The liquids, I’m questioning. So that may be the next big announcement, is what size your liquids need to be,” Secretary Noem told a conference in Washington last week. I don’t know about you, but over the years I’ve had to throw away some very valuable personal items acquired in the duty-free shop, which had utterly failed to warn me prior to my purchase.

Relaxed liquid limits would be great. But getting undressed is one of the worst parts of post-9/11 travel, and I, for one, will be glad to finally see the end of it.

Now for the really big news.

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The Hill was the only corporate media platform I could find that at all covered this massively historic story, running below the weak headline-with-scare-quotes, “Gabbard claims Obama officials ‘manufactured intelligence’ of 2016 Russian election interference.” But you could write an entire book about how unprecedented and important this story is. Yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tweeted this highly-polished thread:

The first thing you should notice is that Tulsi tweeted this from her officialgovernment account, not her personal account. Thus, she is speaking asDNI. No previous DNI has ever made an announcement like that one; not even close.

We live in a time of unique historical moments. Everything from Trump’s re-election and the assassination attempts to the southern aurorae and Hunga Tonga. It is easy to become hardened to claims of historicity when everything feels record-shattering. But this story still stands out.

Tulsi Gabbard’s public disclosure as Director of National Intelligence is unprecedented and historic in nearly every dimension of American governance. Never before has a sitting DNI directly accused former top intelligence officials—including her predecessors—of orchestrating a domestic disinformation campaign to subvert an incoming president.

She did not leak anonymously, defer to internal channels, or await a closed-door investigation; instead, she unveiled evidence from a pending investigation in a tightly structured public thread, complete with official documents, internal communications, and a direct handoff to the Department of Justice— all under her own name and title.

It defied every norm of intelligence conduct. The DNI normally never speaks publicly about ongoing investigations, it has never accused former administrations of treason (or any crime), and certainly does not weaponize the credibility of the office to ignite a public reckoning. This marks the first time in modern history that the intelligence community’s internal coup (if proven) has been openly exposed by its own leadership, transforming the IC from a shield into a spotlight, and potentially rewriting the entire post-9/11 national security order.

🔥 In a series of polished, made-for-publication tweets (in other words, she didn’t do this by herself), Tulsi laid out a damning timeline, including screen grabs from relevant documents. Before the 2106 elections, multiple classified teams investigated Russian election interference and found there wasn’t any. “We agree: Russia probably is not (and will not) trying to influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure,” one analyst concluded.

Right after the elections, then-DNI James Clapper authored a report that concluded, “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.” On December 8th, 2016, IC analysts prepared a brief for then-President Obama that would have reported that Russia “did not impact recent U.S. election results.”

But before it was published, that report was pulled. The next day, December 9th, Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, and CIA Director John Brennan met with President Obama at the White House. “Obama directed the IC to create a new intelligence assessment that detailed Russian election meddling,” Tulsi said, “even though it would contradict multiple intelligence assessments released over the previous several months.”

A series of high-profile leaks to the Washington Post, NBC, and others, immediately followed, all sourced to “anonymous” intelligence officials. The WaPo reported, “This presidential campaign marks the first time Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election, the officials said.” Similarly, NBC ran with, “U.S. intelligence officials now believe with a high level of confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.”

Then, on January 6th, 2017 —two weeks before Trump took the oath— “DNI Clapper unveiled the new, Obama-directed politicized assessment, a gross weaponization of intelligence that laid the groundwork for a years-long coup intended to subvert President Trump’s entire presidency.”

You know the rest. Resistance! RussiaGate! Election interference! Impeachment! Impeachment again! And so on, ad nauseum.

As an aside, two years later, on July 24, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Trump a soccer ball and told him, “the ball is in your court, Mr. President.” Trump took the ball, then took the podium and blasted the American intelligence community for the first time. My belief is that, in Helsinki, Putin told Trump about the intelligence community’s plot to overthrow the American presidency. I can’t prove it; however, I can make a compelling circumstantial case.

But I digress.

🔥 Tulsi ended her thread with this even more remarkable tweet, advising that she was now “providing all documents to the DOJ”:

Let’s start here, at the end, and work backwards.

Despite Democrat wailing this was all just to distract people from the Epstein scandal, there is zero chance that Tulsi Gabbard would have made these public claims without being completely ready. Putting a solid criminal case together takes time. Crooks get off on loopholes when prosecutors cut corners. She did not make this historic announcement before she was sure it was solid.

As more evidence, she immediately announced turning it over to DOJ. For what? The only reason she’d hand it off to DOJ is for prosecution. On cue, understandably fatigued MAGA people sighed, and complained that nothing ever happens. But this is different.

It’s different because there is also zero chance that Tulsi would have invoked DOJ in her announcement without clearing it with DOJ ahead of time. There’s no evidence DOJ was surprised, which is exactly what we should expect. In other words, DOJ was already waiting for the official handoff. And DOJ wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t plan to do something.

The last thing Pam Bondi needs right now is another disappointing non-investigation.

🔥 But— what documents did Tulsi give DOJ? She gave us some of them. On top of her Twitter thread, Tulsi also took the unprecedented step of declassifying a stack of related evidence unearthed from inside the IC’s secretive, hallowed halls. Here’s the link, now available on the DNI’s website, marked “Approved for release by the DNI on 17 July 2025.” I.e., Thursday.

The lightly redacted documents are a deeply sourced, legally framed, historically explosive disclosure of what appears to be coordinated manipulation of intelligence leading up to and following the 2016 election. They include the pulled December 8th presidential daily briefing (PDB), which originally concluded, “We assess that Russian and criminal actors did notimpact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities.”

But later that same day, an internal email from a senior official put the kibosh on the PDB: “Based on some new guidance, we are going to push backpublication of the PDB. It will not run tomorrow…” Perhaps worse, the documents show the successful push for the replacement intelligence community assessment (ICA) to incorporate Hillary Clinton’s anti-Trump “Russia dossier,” even though it was nearly completely fabricated. For context, that’s the one with the urinating hookers.

🔥 The way Tulsi pre-empted this disclosure cut the legs out from under corporate media’s usual knee-jerk response: “… but she provided no evidence.” Oh, she provided the evidence, all right. If they bother to look.

In other words, Tulsi’s historic tweet neutralized the media’s usual gaslighting, which takes full advantage of customary prosecutorial prurience. How many times have you heard, “we don’t comment during an investigation,” or “we can’t comment on national security matters?” Tulsi just turned that classic trick on its head, ripping the media’s playbook right out of its hands.

Now, reporters can’t lead with “DNI Gabbard claimed without providing evidence…”

Beyond criminal investigations, intelligence community research is neverpublished while an investigation is still live. I couldn’t find a single other example. That’s what makes Tulsi’s move nearly unprecedented in modern American history. That should also tell you how unprecedented all this is, and ripping up the playbook is probably perfectly appropriate given the context of the alleged crimes.

It might even be necessary. Now that it’s gone viral, the investigation cannot be buried. That would have been trick number two.

Next, let’s look at some of the most remarkable words included in her Twitter thread.

🔥 Right from the top, Tulsi called the alleged conduct “subverting the will of the American people and undermining our democratic republic.” Later, she would describe it as “treasonous.” Those are extremely strong words, and would have been laughed off social media in a pre-January 6th world. They can’t wring their hands about “dangerous rhetoric” after calling the Capitol protest an “insurrection” for four years.

But what about the name? On top of Clapper, Comey, and Brennan, Tulsi named one more: Barack Hussein Obama. Two years ago, we could have skimmed over Obama’s name. Former presidents are never prosecuted. That was the rule. But six Trump prosecutions and one Supreme Court case later, and we now have both precedent, guidelines, and a handy-dandy SCOTUS framework.

The Supreme Court said presidents have no immunity for “unofficial acts,” and presidents can be prosecuted once out of office, under the right circumstances. The Obama-era IC operation Tulsi alleged wasn’t part of a war plan or a diplomatic initiative. It was a domestic political counterinsurgency— engineered after the election to discredit the incoming administration.

That’s not a core Article II power.

Look, I’m not bold enough to predict Obama’s indictment. But I will —confidently— predict he’s going to be talking to some attorneys about this (if he hasn’t already). He was just named as a co-conspirator in a DNI referral to the DOJ.

🔥 The Cold War phase is over. Phase II has begun— the public war between the Trump Administration and the Deep State. It’s now weapons hot.

Here’s a list of all the records Tulsi just shattered, in a single Twitter thread and 124 pages of declassified documents. And this list is only what I could think of as of this morning:

1. First sitting Director of National Intelligence to publicly accuse former intelligence leaders of a treasonous conspiracy (or any crime).

2. First time a DNI declassified internal IC assessments, memos, and emails during an active DOJ referral.

3. First full publication of an aborted Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) draft that contradicted an official narrative.

4. First evidence-based accusation that the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was politicized by presidential directive.

5. First direct public attribution of intelligence manipulation to a sitting president —Barack Obama— by name, not just implication.

6. First official public confirmation that the Steele Dossier was used in the 2017 ICA, despite internal dissent and known credibility issues.

7. First use of a Twitter thread as an official vehicle for declassifying national intelligence—turning social media into a disclosure mechanism.

8. First coordinated public release of IC whistleblower complaints, dissenting analyst emails, and interagency meeting notes in a single drop.

9. First breach of the classified means credible doctrine— by showing how classification was weaponized to create false public certainty. This one has many legs.

10. First dismantling of the we can’t comment on ongoing investigationsplaybook by someone inside the intel chain of command.

11. First time the post-Trump impeachment “insurrection” narrative has been turned against the intelligence agencies that constructed it.

12. First voluntary public declassification of internal IC meeting notes confirming political coordination of IC messaging— without subpoenas and before the usual years of Congressional hearings and wrangling.

Once again, we find ourselves off the map. It is truly terra incognita. There’s no predicting how this plays out; it’s historically unique. There are potential roles for the intelligence agencies, for the DOJ, and for Congress, and we can expect the Deep State to lash out wildly.

But what we know for sure is that Tulsi just tore the lid off the simmering bouillabaisse, and it is going to boil over.

Boil, baby, boil.

Have a wonderful weekend! Tune back in on Monday morning, when we’ll pick up the threads again with lots more essential news and commentary.

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