Democrats are losing their grip on reality.
I don’t mean that they’re going crazy. That ship sailed around the time they started saying “sex assigned at birth.”
I mean, they’re literally losing the ability to shape the narratives that determine what most Americans perceive as “reality.”
They know it’s happening, and they know exactly who to blame: a Trump-aligned billionaire named David Ellison.
Last year, his film production company Skydance (which gave us the refreshingly patriotic “Top Gun: Maverick”) bought Paramount, giving Ellison ownership of CBS News.
A few months later, he bought news site The Free Press and installed its founder — anti-woke, classical liberal Bari Weiss — as CBS’s editor-in-chief.
The change was obvious right away. Weiss refused to allow a story about President Trump’s deportation policy to run without proper context. Then, at a time when most mainstream outlets were scoffing at the administration’s war on health care fraud, CBS sent a reporter to pound the pavement and discover the true extent of these scams.
But Ellison wasn’t done. Late last month, Ellison inked a deal to acquire Warner Bros.-Discovery and its vast stable of media assets, including CNN.
This is a disaster for the Democrats. Bernie Sanders took to X to warn of a right-wing “oligarchy.” Elizabeth Warren signed a letter expressing “concerns” that the deal might violate antitrust law, even though she barely objected when the reliably liberal Netflix, which raised far more antitrust red flags, was in line to buy Warner Bros.
Warren, Bernie, and the rest of their tribe know that their empire of bias is beginning to collapse.
It once seemed indestructible. Liberals control the entire educational establishment at every level: textbook publishers, teachers' unions, school administrators, universities, and the foundations that hand out research grants.
They also control the paper of record in nearly every major city, almost all TV news, and the entire entertainment industry.
And yet it turns out this entire infrastructure is so fragile that they can’t let a single node be controlled by an outsider.
Those who operate within this network aren’t usually aware that they’re engaged in information warfare against the American people. The liberal narrative relies on a subtle form of self-deception to perpetuate itself.
These people spend their lives sitting in classrooms and lecture halls, streaming Netflix dramas, nodding along to New Yorker articles, and laughing at John Oliver’s jokes. Everywhere they turn, it’s the same message, with the occasional approved bit of heterodoxy to keep things interesting. The medium is also the message: its consistency across every prestigious institution creates the impression that everyone who’s even a little bit compassionate, intelligent, or cool believes all the same things.
All of these people know that Islamophobia is a greater threat to America than radical Islam. So when a pair of young ISIS supporters threw a bomb at a group of anti-Muslim protestors outside the New York City mayoral mansion, CNN framed the story this way:
“Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather,” the network posted on X. “But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home.”
If that’s all you read, you’d naturally conclude that the bombers hated Muslims and were targeting a Muslim mayor.
CNN anchor Abby Phillip moved beyond vague insinuations and proffered an outright falsehood about who the attack was targeting.
“Two Republicans say Muslims don’t belong here after an attempted terror attack against New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing, really, to condemn those comments,” she said on air.
Egregious, self-righteous distortions like this are on their way out. Ellison’s acquisition deal is expected to close this fall, after which CNN will likely be under new management.
The Cathedral will fight any reforms tooth and nail, but Democrats are right to be scared of Ellison. He’s dismantling a system that lies to millions of Americans every day while brainwashing the purveyors of those lies so thoroughly that they don’t even realize they’re lying.
Mainstream media outlets that cultivate genuine intellectual diversity and follow stories wherever they lead seemed like an impossible dream just a few years ago. Thanks to Ellison, they’re closer than ever to becoming a reality.
Will Chamberlain (@WillChamberlain) is the Vice President for External Affairs at the Edmund Burke Foundation. He is also the Senior Counsel at the Article III Project.