Friday, September 19, 2025

‘The End of Politics!’ – Psaki, Maddow Cluck Over Trump & Orban.

MSNBC host and Russia hoaxer Rachel Maddow has claimed President Trump’s return to the White House would represent “the end of politics,” comparing the 45th President to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, implicitly suggesting the nation of Hungary has “no politics.”

Billing herself as an expert in authoritarianism, Maddow proffered, “On the Viktor Orban thing… that’s really what [Trump] is offering.”

She continued: “What he’s offering is….’If you pick me, that’ll be the end of politics, and you won’t have to deal with politics anymore. You won’t have to deal with contested elections, you won’t have to deal with contests or divisions when it comes to power. You’ll have a strongman leader and I’ll just do what I want, and won’t that be a lot simpler?'”

Former Biden spokesman Jen Psaki nodded her head in agreement throughout Maddow’s rant, flexing their shared geopolitical ignorance.

Hungary contests elections regularly, with “politics” and political debate as fierce as anywhere else in the world.

Under Orban — who has previously lost an election, departing office without resistance — the country regularly holds referendum-like “national consultations” on major issues, to discover whether the public backs government policies against LGBTQ content aimed at children, mass migration, and so on. Hungary is also a NATO ally and European Union member-state.

WATCH:

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MSNBC host and Russia hoaxer Rachel Maddow has claimed President Trump's return to the White House would represent "the end of politics," comparing the 45th President to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, implicitly suggesting the nation of Hungary has "no politics." show more

Editor’s Notes

Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.

RAHEEM J. KASSAM Editor-in-Chief
Maddow, supposedly so concerned about “the end of politics,” has openly suggested that Joe Biden’s Justice Department should use the political prosecutions it has been piling on Trump to force him out of the presidential race
Maddow, supposedly so concerned about “the end of politics,” has openly suggested that Joe Biden’s Justice Department should use the political prosecutions it has been piling on Trump to force him out of the presidential race show more
for exclusive members-only insights

‘Woke’ Journalism Kills Sports Illustrated.

Sports Illustrated (SI) laid off its entire staff and the iconic sports brand could be headed to the graveyard after years of woke journalism and a recent artificial intelligence scandal.

The details: According to a letter to staff sent on Friday morning, Arena Group will lay off its SI staff, noting some employees would be terminated immediately and others would work through the next 90 days.

“Go woke, go broke”: In recent years, SI has allowed progressive narratives to creep into its journalism. For example:

  • Transgender: The 2021 and 2023 SI Swimsuit edition featured a transgender biological male [pictured above] on its cover.
  • Obesity: In recent years, SI featured obese women in runway shows and their swimsuit editions to promote ‘body positivity’ which is contradictory to a brand that’s supposed to be about athletics.
  • Gender pay gap: The brand wrote articles about closing the ‘gender pay gap’ in sports, a movement that ignores the reality that men’s sports bring in more revenue.

The AI scandal: Last year SI was caught using artificial intelligence-generated articles and posting them under the names of fake journalists. Making matters worse, SI tried to deny it.

Back up: The SI brand is owned by a company called Authentic Brands Group (ABG). ABG licenses SI to a company called the Arena Group for $15 million per year in exchange for the rights to publish in print and online.

Rent’s due: Arena Group missed a $3.75 million payment to ABG earlier this month.

What happens next? It’s too early to tell whether ABG will find a new licensee, work out a deal with Authentic Brands, or shutter the brand entirely.

This article is from the free ‘Wake Up Right’ newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

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Sports Illustrated (SI) laid off its entire staff and the iconic sports brand could be headed to the graveyard after years of woke journalism and a recent artificial intelligence scandal. show more

Editor’s Notes

Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.

RAHEEM J. KASSAM Editor-in-Chief
I love reading the Wake Up Right newsletter and you should too! It’s neat, fast, and free! And I’m trying to convince the guy who writes it to quit his job and come work at the Pulse
I love reading the Wake Up Right newsletter and you should too! It’s neat, fast, and free! And I’m trying to convince the guy who writes it to quit his job and come work at the Pulse show more
for exclusive members-only insights

‘TrUmP WilL iNvAdE mExIcO!’ – Rolling Stone Freaks Out With Listicle of Trump 2nd Term Pledges.

Rolling Stone magazine has published a ‘listicle‘ of the “awful things” they allege former President Donald Trump will do should he win a second term in the White House on November 5th, 2024. The left-wing publication details a list of policies detailed in Trump’s Agenda47 campaign platform and ideas he’s pushed on the campaign trail — most of which have received widespread support among the electorate. However, according to Rolling Stone, the agenda former President Trump has laid out for a second term is emblematic of an “authoritarian agenda.” The actions they say he’ll take include:

  • He will indict Biden and his other political enemies;
  • He will round up, intern, and deport undocumented immigrants;
  • He will send the military to the border;
  • He will invade Mexico;
  • He will round up the homeless and send the National Guard into cities to fight crime;
  • He will bring back the death penalty in a big way;
  • He will make stuff more expensive by taxing all imported goods;
  • He will reevaluate America’s participation in NATO;
  • He will roll back all of Biden’s climate progress and reinvest in fossil fuels;
  • He will construct “freedom cities” filled with flying cars;
  • He will try to overhaul the education system in the MAGA image;
  • He will torch the First Amendment by going after non-MAGA media;
  • He will legally delegitimize trans-Americans;
  • He will pardon the Jan. 6 rioters;
  • He will gut the federal government and take unprecedented control of what’s left.

Many of the “authoritarian” actions Rolling Stone says Trump will take poll favorably among voters. Nearly two-thirds of voters say they want mass deportations of illegal immigrants. An additional 64 percent supports temporarily militarizing the U.S.’s southern border.

The Biden government has preserved many of the tariffs former President Trump enacted during his first term — actions which Rolling Stone claims are a tax on “all imported goods”. Other agenda items the magazine claims Trump plans to enact are exaggerations. For instance, Trump hasn’t said he’ll invade Mexico — though he has said he’d authorize strikes against drug cartels and designate them as terrorist organizations.

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Rolling Stone magazine has published a 'listicle' of the "awful things" they allege former President Donald Trump will do should he win a second term in the White House on November 5th, 2024. The left-wing publication details a list of policies detailed in Trump's Agenda47 campaign platform and ideas he's pushed on the campaign trail — most of which have received widespread support among the electorate. However, according to Rolling Stone, the agenda former President Trump has laid out for a second term is emblematic of an "authoritarian agenda." The actions they say he'll take include: show more

CNN May Start Charging to Watch News Clips on Cell Phones.

CNN’s new chief executive, Sir Mark Thompson, is considering ways to make people pay to watch news clips on their cell phones as people increasingly turn away from cable news.

Sir Mark said he did not think anyone had yet “cracked the code” on how moving to a subscription model “truly translates to a great news experience,” but noted younger consumers generally get their news from their smartphones relatively early in the day.

They should be willing to pay for that, he said, provided his network “can figure out a way of [making] sure it’s a high quality, differentiated product” on offer.

Sir Mark cautioned he was “not even sure that subscription is the right pathway for CNN.” Still, he said he “do[es] think we need to start experimenting and exploring in the broader sense direct-to-consumer relationships and potentially direct-to-consumer paying relationships.”

The British CNN chief is a former President and CEO of The New York Times and, before that, Director-General and CEO of the state-owned BBC and Channel 4 in his home country.

He will be hoping any new subscription model he adopts does not go the way of the CNN+ streaming service, which tanked within a month of being launched in 2022.

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CNN’s new chief executive, Sir Mark Thompson, is considering ways to make people pay to watch news clips on their cell phones as people increasingly turn away from cable news. show more

NYT: New Hampshire is ‘High Water Mark’ for Haley, Who ‘Can’t Win’ Due to Positions on Immigration, Social Security, and Foreign Wars.

On Wednesday, the New York Times opinion page admitted the political reality for ex-South Carolina Governor Nimrata ‘Nikki’ Haley: she lacks a realistic path to victory for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“But even if Ms. Haley does well in New Hampshire, it won’t matter,” Damon Linker writes, adding: “That’s because Ms. Haley is starkly out of step with the evolution of her party over the past decade.”

Former President Donald Trump’s appeal among non-college-educated voters poses an insurmountable hurdle for Haley, according to the Linker, a senior lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. These voters have “grown weary of candidates emphasizing cuts to entitlements and taxes on the wealthy while also favoring liberal rates of immigration, free-trade agreements that resulted in manufacturing jobs being shipped abroad.”

Haley’s vocal support for raising the retirement age, slashing social security, and cutting other entitlements has been a persistent point of criticism against the former South Carolina Governor on the campaign trail. Her embrace of U.S. interventionism abroad, especially in Ukraine, has also proven to be out of step with much of the Republican electorate — though not with Democrat mega-donors.

Haley finished third place in Monday’s Iowa Republican Caucus, gaining only eight Republican convention delegates to former President Donald Trump’s twenty delegates. The former President won the Caucus by a historic margin with 51 percent of the vote to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 21.2 percent and Haley’s 19.1 percent.

“New Hampshire is overwhelmingly likely to end up as the high-water mark for her campaign,” the Times says of the Haley campaign, noting that Republicans will still prefer Trump as “they’d rather go into the general election with someone they feel they can trust.”

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On Wednesday, the New York Times opinion page admitted the political reality for ex-South Carolina Governor Nimrata 'Nikki' Haley: she lacks a realistic path to victory for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. show more

Editor’s Notes

Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.

RAHEEM J. KASSAM Editor-in-Chief
DID YOU KNOW: Before Monday’s Iowa vote, the late Senator Bob Dole (R-NC) held the record for margin of victory in the state — winning the 1988 Caucus by 12
DID YOU KNOW: Before Monday’s Iowa vote, the late Senator Bob Dole (R-NC) held the record for margin of victory in the state — winning the 1988 Caucus by 12 show more
for exclusive members-only insights

Corporate News Giant Fires Tops Execs As Financial Woes Grow.

One of the world’s largest commercial news publishers, Reach, owner of the far-left Daily Mirror, the right-leaning Daily Express, and over 100 local newspapers, has parted ways with senior staff and cut around 800 jobs within the space of one year.

The Daily Mirror‘s first female editor, Alison Phillips, reportedly left by mutual agreement, following group editor-in-chief, Lloyd Embley, who abruptly left last summer. Phillips was a 26-year veteran of the left-leaning tabloid. The moves fueled concerns that the pre-Christmas job cuts may continue this year, further plunging the group into crisis.

“Everyone is reeling,” one longtime staffer told The Guardian. “Everyone is saying the same thing. We are done. There is no real faith in the direction and support for the title. There is a lot of despondency. I have been here a long time and I have never seen staff morale so low.”

In addition to The Daily Mirror and the Daily Express, Reach owns the Daily Star, the Daily Record, the Manchester Evening News, the Liverpool Echo, and over 100 other local newspapers and websites across the United Kingdom.

Although it is the sixth biggest online operation in the UK after Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and the BBC — and the UK’s largest newspaper group — Reach’s digital revenues dropped by £21 million (~$26.7 million) in 2023 to just £127.8 million (~$162.6 million). Reach’s market valuation, which was a whopping £1.3 billion (~$1.65 billion) in mid-2021, has plummeted to just £220m (~$280 million) in less than three years.

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One of the world's largest commercial news publishers, Reach, owner of the far-left Daily Mirror, the right-leaning Daily Express, and over 100 local newspapers, has parted ways with senior staff and cut around 800 jobs within the space of one year. show more
desantis

DeSantis Lashes Out at Conservative Outlets That Won’t Back Him – ‘It’s a Racket!’

Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has expressed irritation at the conservative media for declining to support him uncritically, calling it evidence of a “racket.” The outburst comes just days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, where DeSantis is in a “fight for his life” against Nikki Haley for second place position.

“It used to be, ‘Oh, Republicans, you know, don’t like the liberal media, the NBC, CNN, all that stuff or whatever, but that the conservative media were like the good guys, right? They’re fighting for us,’” DeSantis said at an event in Clive, Iowa on Thursday.

“Well, let me tell you, it’s all a racket. OK? It’s all a racket,” he complained. “They’re trying to get clicks, they’re trying to do all this stuff. There’s as much fake news on the right as there is on the corporate press now.”

He claimed the alleged situation was “fine” with him, as “that’s just the way it works.”

“It’s ultimately a business. You gotta do that. But if we’re not able to speak as individuals and if we have to rely on those filters, whether they’re traditional liberal media or kind of the more conservative media that’s done, look, I mean, I think it’s just the case people have said, you know, any great movement, you know, great causes start out as a movement, you know, end up a business, and degenerate into a racket,” he rambled.

DeSantis is reported to have been especially aggrieved at Fox News for not defending him when Donald Trump challenged his pandemic record during a recent town hall, which significantly outdrew the Floridian’s parallel debate with Nikki Haley.

Previously, the governor received much favorable coverage from Fox, but this was reduced as he crashed in the polls, with sources indicating that the Murdoch family, which runs the network, “can smell a loser.”

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Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has expressed irritation at the conservative media for declining to support him uncritically, calling it evidence of a "racket." The outburst comes just days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, where DeSantis is in a "fight for his life" against Nikki Haley for second place position. show more

Editor’s Notes

Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.

RAHEEM J. KASSAM Editor-in-Chief
Just to be clear, The National Pulse is not dependent on “clicks” and is not part of any “racket”
Just to be clear, The National Pulse is not dependent on “clicks” and is not part of any “racket” show more
for exclusive members-only insights

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Lashes Out at Iowa’s ‘Rural People Voting Their Craziness About the Cult.’

Left-wing MSNBC host Chris Matthews warned Democrats, ‘young people‘, women, and black voters that they need to turn out for Joe Biden to counter what he said are “rural people out there voting their craziness about the cult” – referring to supporters of Donald Trump. Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Matthews suggested rural voters were mentally unsound and would take away rights from racial minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ community.

Having apparently lost faith in the Biden government’s law-fare campaign against former President Donald Trump, Matthews warned that Democrats will need to show up and vote to defeat Trump and can’t rely on the courts to stop him for them. “I think voters have got to take their hand in this election and don’t wait for the government to do it,” Matthews told show hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, before continuing, “because, you know this election is going to be close. And it’s going to be very close in places like Pennsylvania, and you’re gonna have rural people out there voting their craziness about the cult.”

“So you better be there to match them and you got to be there. Vote against that. And I’m telling you, this is really important that you vote for your rights,” Matthews added.

A long-time fixture on MSNBC, Matthews has an extensive history of making ridiculous claims and inappropriate comments about individuals and groups of people at large. Last month, the far-left Democrat television host made a similar claim — again on Morning Joe — likening rural supporters of former President Trump to “terrorists.”

In 2022, MSNBC drew criticism for putting Matthews back on the air after the host retired in 2020 following a slew of accusations that he frequently made sexually crude and suggestive comments to female guests and employees. In 2016, Matthews was caught on a hot mic making sexually degrading comments about future First Lady Melania Trump.

“Did you see her walk? Runway walk. My God is that good,” he could be heard saying while covering Donald Trump’s Indiana primary victory. He then added: “I could watch that runway show.”

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Left-wing MSNBC host Chris Matthews warned Democrats, 'young people', women, and black voters that they need to turn out for Joe Biden to counter what he said are "rural people out there voting their craziness about the cult" – referring to supporters of Donald Trump. Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Matthews suggested rural voters were mentally unsound and would take away rights from racial minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. show more

National Review Says Pick DeSantis or Haley Because They’d Be Cool With ‘Losing’ a Stolen Election.

The establishment National Review magazine concedes it is an “understatement” to describe Donald Trump as the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination, but is pleading that it is “not too late” for Republicans to choose Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis instead. The outlet claims the pair would be “quite likely” to defeat Joe Biden, but would be better “for the party and for the country” even if they lost because they would not try to fight a stolen election.

While the Review admits that Trump “notched some important conservative wins and even forged some creative victories” as President, citing the Abraham Accords, they insist he “disgraced” himself by “trying to deny the results of an election.”

“It’s impossible to imagine Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, whatever their other flaws, engaging in such grotesquely selfish behavior injurious to our republic,” the Review states, arguing their willingness to submit to a potentially rigged election makes them “vastly preferable to Trump.”

“When a mob, fervently believing Trump’s lies, fought its way into the U.S. Capitol to try to end the count, Trump did little or nothing to try to stop it,” they add, falsely.

Nevertheless, the Review had to admit that “the electability argument [against Trump] has been rendered null and void by his strong polling in a hypothetical matchup with President Biden.”

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The establishment National Review magazine concedes it is an "understatement" to describe Donald Trump as the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination, but is pleading that it is "not too late" for Republicans to choose Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis instead. The outlet claims the pair would be "quite likely" to defeat Joe Biden, but would be better "for the party and for the country" even if they lost because they would not try to fight a stolen election. show more

WATCH – Kassam Cautions ‘Populism Is In A Dependent Ascendency’, Needs to Be More Than a Protest Movement.

The National Pulse’s Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam cautioned supporters of populist movements across the globe that their movements are often too dependent on globalism as a mirror, creating a political symbiosis. Appearing on Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room, Kassam warned populists against complacency, especially as the 2024 environment feels increasingly like 2015/16.

TOO DEPENDENT ON GLOBALISM.

“Globalism is being routed. It is being routed intellectually. It is being routed morally. It is being routed by the public will,” Kassam said, adding, “but populism itself is kind of in this what I think is a symbiotic relationship right now with globalism. It is a push and pull. And they both kind of leverage each other.”

“The reason I think you have what is a dependent ascendency – if it is an ascendency at all – rather than an independent ascendency is because it really doesn’t have its legs. Populism, still, has been carried kind of on the back of a few figures the last decade,” he added.

VULNERABILITY WITHOUT ACTION.

The lack of formal political apparatuses, according to Kassam, has left many populist movements around the globe vulnerable to political persecution and law-fare actions by globalists. He pointed to the new globalist Tusk government in Poland ordering the arrest of populist officials in Andrzej Duda’s previous right-wing administration, as well as Jack Smith’s law-fare prosecutions of Donald Trump in the United States, as examples of globalists striking back.

In addition to threats posed by globalists, the lack of political infrastructure has also exposed populist movements from within. Kassam, responding to Bannon’s examples of grassroots protests against globalism as a sign of the movement’s strength, said: “You point to protests and truckers and all of that, and I’ll just point to Giorgia Meloni and Mike Johnson.” Both were initially hailed as allies of right-wing populism but have since proven to be weak leaders who have caved to globalist political pressure.

“These people cannot be in charge of populist parties with populist bases,” Kassam said.

MORE THAN A PROTEST MOVEMENT.

Kassam also warned that many populist political movements become too complacent with being just a “party of perennial protest” –  stuck in permanent political opposition. “Here’s the crossroads that MAGA is at right now – America First, the global populist-nationalist movement writ-large… are you going to be parties of protest for the rest of your lives? Or are you going to be parties of government?” Kassam said, challenging populist political activists before adding: “Because if you’re going to be parties of government you can’t have Meloni in charge, you can’t have Jonson in charge. You can’t have Ronna McDaniel in charge. You actually have to take those reins of power and use them.”

“They’re giving you a choice. You can shut up and go along with it [globalism] or you can do something about it,” Kassam concluded.

WATCH:

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The National Pulse's Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam cautioned supporters of populist movements across the globe that their movements are often too dependent on globalism as a mirror, creating a political symbiosis. Appearing on Stephen K. Bannon's War Room, Kassam warned populists against complacency, especially as the 2024 environment feels increasingly like 2015/16. show more