You’re the tab that I want, oo oo oo honey …
Friends-
This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.
Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence.…
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) December 23, 2025
But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.
I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.
Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are.
Ed: This is horrible, heartbreaking news. Please keep the Sasse family and Ben in particular in your prayers. Click through to read the rest of his message to all his friends and followers. It’ll stick with you this Christmas and beyond.
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Issues & Insights: And, despite the endless lament over “affordability,” the fact is that real, inflation-adjusted wages have been climbing since Trump took office. That’s a sharp reversal from the Biden economy, which created a genuine affordability crisis that we are only now clawing our way out of. Deficits during Trump’s 10 months in office are $100 billion lower than they were the year before under Biden.
As MS NOW put it, “Democrats were very clear: Trump owns the economy — every last bit of it.”
We agree! We are going to hold Democrats to that. So should voters come next November.
Ed: Presidents always own the economy. Presidents like to pretend otherwise at times; Barack Obama spent all eight years blaming George W. Bush for the aspects of the economy that failed to ignite under his leadership. Biden tried that strategy too, but he turned out to be much worse at blame-shifting.
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Poor Hunter 🙄 https://t.co/60rsAfwioV
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) December 23, 2025
Ed: There are tragedies, and there are consequences. This is the latter.
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Don Surber: CBS did not censor Sharyn Alfonsi. Weiss asked her to tell the other side of the story. We will see if she does.
Alfonsi is not the first person in the CBS newsroom to face this situation. Andy Rooney, the venerable voice of reason, had his Essay on War spiked in 1970. …
Rooney walked when CBS spiked his essay on war. It was an opinion piece that he wouldn’t change.
I suggest that if Alfonsi meant her story as an opinion piece, she should walk, too.
Ed: All of Alfonsi’s stories turn out to be opinion pieces. At least Rooney was honest about it.
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1) 60 Minutes has a well-established leftwing/anti-conservative bias.
2) This bias has resulted in several notorious scandals.
3) Bari Weiss is fully aware of 1) and 2).
4) The CECOT story is exactly the kind where 1) is most likely to lead to 2).
5) Bari Weiss is aware of 4).— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) December 23, 2025
Ed: Click through to read the whole 20-point thread. It needs a 21st, though: “21) If Alfonsi doesn’t suffer any consequences for this, the first 20 points don’t really matter.”
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NY Post: President Trump received some rare good polling news Monday as a new survey shows him with his highest approval rating since early fall.
The poll of likely voters by InsiderAdvantage shows 50% approve of the job Trump is doing while 41% disapprove, with the remaining 9% undecided.
Monday’s results mark the highest raw approval rating for the president in an InsiderAdvantage survey since late September, when 52% of respondents approved of his performance.
Ed: For what it’s worth, RCP shows Trump at a -10.6 on approval/disapproval. However, today’s economic news may produce a bump over the holidays.
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Alfonsi was the reporter on a 13-minute “60 Minutes” feature this year that opened with a German police raid on a man’s apartment for posting a cartoon they didn’t like. There were no critical questions for the German speech police and zero pro-speech figures interviewed. https://t.co/CHaSBxHcOZ
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) December 23, 2025
Ed: Okay, okay, POINT 22 …
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Just the News: Former CIA Director John Brennan’s lawyers have taken the extraordinary step of confirming their client is a “target” of a criminal grand jury investigation in Florida and are asking the chief federal judge in Miami to stop the proceedings on the grounds that the Justice Department is “judge shopping.”
The revelations came in a letter that defense lawyers Ken Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell Davis sent Monday to U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, a George W. Bush appointee to the bench who supervises the Miami federal district court.
Wainstein and Davis revealed they have been informed by U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quinones in Miami that the grand jury is investigating Brennan’s role in the 2016-27 Russia collusion probe that has since been discredited, including a CIA assessment that Russian president Vladimir Putin tried to help Trump win the 2016 election.
Whistleblower evidence released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe has called into question that assessment, revealing career intelligence experts disagreed with the conclusions made in the rushed report released to the public at the end of the Obama administration.
Ed: Griping about judge-shopping is pretty ironic, under the circumstances. Brennan lied to Congress about his role in perpetuating a hoax based on Hillary Clinton’s campaign dirty trick.
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The U.S. told the UN Security Council that President Trump is open to direct talks with Iran, reaffirming that “zero enrichment” remains Washington’s official stance.@jasonmbrodsky pic.twitter.com/derR7gRFUt
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 23, 2025
Ed: I’m not opposed to direct talks, but I also don’t think the Iranians will cooperate. This is almost certainly a public position for diplomatic purposes anyway. The only reservation I have about this is that it might tend to discourage the democracy activists in Iran.
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Alan Dershowitz: Because McCarthy was a member of Congress, he was immune from being sued for defamation. Similarly, current members of Congress have threatened to read lists of accused sexual offenders.
Indeed today, nearly all the denials of civil liberties that characterized the original McCarthyism are being replicated in this new Epstein-McCarthyism.
Among these injustices are guilt by association, which implies that anyone who knew Epstein must be somehow complicit in his crimes; anonymous accusations which deny the accused the right to confront their accusers; guilt by accusation, which assumes that all accusations must be believed, even if made by alleged ‘victims’ or ‘survivors’ with histories of lying; suppressing evidence that would prove that some accusers may not be credible or may themselves have been perpetrators; attacking lawyers who defend accused perpetrators, and accusing them of being facilitators; refusal by politicians on both sides, as well as the media and civil liberties groups, to raise civil liberties concern, out of fear they will be accused of victim shaming and siding with perpetrators.
Ed: Read it all. Dersh hits the nail on the head. This is another version of McCarthyism, only this time it’s fueled by both parties.
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The Department of Justice is currently looking into the validity of this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar and we will follow up as soon as possible.
In the meantime, three facts stand out:
-The postmark on the envelope is Virginia, not New York, where Jeffrey…
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) December 23, 2025
-The postmark on the envelope is Virginia, not New York, where Jeffrey Epstein was jailed at the time.
-The return address listed the wrong jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.
-The envelope was processed three days AFTER Epstein’s death.
The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time. The FBI made this conclusion based on the following facts:
-The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey…
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) December 23, 2025
-The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s.
-The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York.
-The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.
This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.
Ed: That’s the problem with releasing grand jury material and other internal data from investigations, especiallty in high-profile cases. Dersh talks about this as well. The American tradition of keeping these materials under seal exists for very good reasons, and we’re all about to learn them the hard way.
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Glenn Reynolds: The wholesale adoption of diversity, equity and inclusion ideology in almost all our major institutions has done untold damage to American society.
It was advertised as something noble — a way to open opportunities for women and minorities who had been unfairly denied them.
But through a combination of bureaucratic laziness and political malice, DEI soon became something approaching a ban on hiring millennial white males at the beginning of their careers.
The harm goes far beyond the wreckage it imposed on those young men.
Ed: The damage is more basic. It incentivized identity over performance, and the results should surprise no one. That explains the sharp decline in performance and credibility of every industry that adopted DEI policies, especially education, government, and the media. Speaking of which …
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If @BariWeiss doesn’t fire this Sharyn Alphonsi person, Weiss will utterly fail in her mission to fix CBS News. Leadership 101 – the commander commands his unit or is commanded by it. Bari, if you were in command, take command. If you’re not in command, walk away.
Alphonsi…— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 23, 2025
Alphonsi slammed her boss in a letter she absolutely knew would be leaked, and no doubt intended to be leaked. She publicly disrespected her boss. If you tolerate that insubordination, you’re going to get more of it. So don’t tolerate it.
Yes, Weiss will get a lot of heat if she does what is necessary. Alphonsi, a Democrat hack with a track record of this kind of propagandizing, will be made a symbol of the resistance. Let her be that outside of CBS News.
If Weiss chooses – through weakness, misguided kindness, or lack of support from her superiors – to accept this, she is absolutely going to fail.
Fire her. Now. And explain that she is fired because you are not going to tolerate public disrespect or slanted news coverage. Let as many of her friends as want to leave CBS. That’s addition by subtraction.
If her bosses will not support her in doing this, Weiss should quit. To stay on, powerless and humiliated, is degrading. Bari, you’ve been disrespected in public by a subordinate. Are you just going to take that?
Either Bari Weiss wins this fight, or she loses it. There’s no working together for a better tomorrow. She’s either in charge, or the leftists are.
Fire her, Bari. Do it today.
Ed: Exactly this. Everyone at CBS News is watching this. If Weiss doesn’t act, she will deal with unending challenges to her authority and continued corruption in the reporting process. If Weiss fires Alfonsi, others may walk out too, but that’s addition by subtraction, as Kurt says. And I doubt that many will choose unemployment just to defend Alfonsi’s activism. Anyone who has had to take over a unit in crisis has had to deal with this, and only a firm hand will work.
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Editor’s note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you’re digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments — and support independent platforms — why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code MERRY to get 74% off your membership!
