GOP strategist: Of course, politics crept into the Masters
Each shot carries the weight of history, each Sunday is charged with the potential for greatness.
And last Sunday had it all.
Rory McIlroy — the face of the PGA Tour — was chasing his elusive career grand slam. Just behind him as the final day began was LIV Golf superstar Bryson DeChambeau. It was the pairing fans wanted: two elite players, two tours, one iconic stage.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case these days, politics found a way to creep in. The noise started Friday as DeChambeau began climbing the leaderboard. Almost immediately, online chatter speculated that his limited TV coverage was due to his support for Donald Trump. (DeChambeau's YouTube series 'Break 50' is genuinely great entertainment and his episode with the president is worth watching.)
In many ways, the collision of politics and golf was inevitable. The divide between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf mirrors the political climate in America. If the PGA Tour is the Republican Party, then LIV Golf is MAGA. The parallels are unmistakable: LIV hosts events at Trump courses, thrives on disruption, and rejects tradition. I've been to a LIV event. The crowd, the music, the atmosphere — it's a completely different experience. Honestly, it felt like a place where Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore might walk onto the tee box. Maybe that's why both MAGA and LIV are accused of the same thing: blowing up the very institutions they claim to be saving.
So, it's no surprise that a few social media posts about DeChambeau, Trump and supposed TV bias started circulating during the Masters — and before long, they had leaked into mainstream coverage and became part of the narrative.
This might sound silly or trivial on the surface, but the underlying belief is far more serious: that the mainstream media — even sports media — is part of a vast, coordinated 'deep state' conspiracy against all things Trump.
This isn't random. It's part of the MAGA playbook. That's why Trump lashes out at CNN's Kaitlan Collins for asking why he's defying a Supreme Court order. It's why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses a questioner at a town hall of being 'brainwashed by the news.'
The goal is simple: Discredit, deflect and dismantle trust in anything that challenges their narrative.
It's a worldview that treats every critical question as an attack — and it's the same mentality behind Trump's push for the Federal Communications Commission to punish CBS and make them 'pay a big price' for coverage he found unfavorable.
Without question, there is bias in the media — and conservatives are right to call it out when coverage veers from journalism into fiction. But let's be clear, that doesn't make the media the enemy. Asking tough questions of those in power isn't an attack. It's a responsibility.
The Founding Fathers understood that unchecked power is a threat to liberty. That's why the Constitution wasn't written to restrain the people. It was written to restrain the government and protect our freedoms. Some rights were so essential, so foundational, that the Founders enshrined them in the Bill of Rights. Among them — the freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, freedom of speech and assembly, and due process of law — stand as pillars of a free society.
These aren't suggestions. They're not tools to be used when convenient and discarded when uncomfortable. They are the guardrails of liberty. They ensure that a 'government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.' A free press — even an imperfect one — isn't a threat to the republic. It's proof that we still have one.
Matt Wylie is a South Carolina-based Republican political strategist and analyst with more than 25 years of experience working on federal, state and local campaigns.
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Time Magazine
27 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
Colbert Is Practically Daring CBS to Shut Him Down Early
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He moved on to reports claiming that his show, despite winning its broadcast time slot, was losing some $40 million a year: 'I could see us losing $24 million, but where could Paramount have possibly spent the other 16… oh yeah.' In an instantly viral soundbite, Colbert responded to Trump's social media posts calling him talentless and gloating over his show's demise by asking: 'Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism?: Go f-ck yourself. ' Then he prefaced a riff on the Wall Street Journal 's Epstein birthday letter bombshell with: 'The President was buddies with a pedophile.' 'It's a great day to be me because I am not Donald Trump,' Colbert greeted the audience on Tuesday, before discussing reports that FBI agents were ordered to scour the Epstein files for Trump mentions. 'All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't hide who Dumpty humped with his friend,' he quipped. Also: 'It's not a great look when you fly on the pedophile's plane enough times to earn diamond pervert status.' In response to Trump's apparent fixation on arresting Barack Obama, Colbert wondered aloud: 'What the f-ck is wrong with this guy?' Finally, he seemed to pivot away from the President with a bit about soaring beef prices. But then he brought Trump into that story as well, suggesting that his tariffs were partly to blame. Wednesday's Late Show opened by poking fun at Coca-Cola's plans to oblige POTUS by manufacturing cane-sugar-sweetened soda in the U.S. with a faux advertisement for cocaine-enhanced 'Don Jr. Coke.' A monologue that kicked off with a few jokes about the impending heatwave soon segued to a familiar subject. 'One person who's already sweating is Donald Trump,' Colbert said, before pausing to let the audience boo. To no one's surprise, the host made a meal out of the news that the Justice Department had, in May, informed the President that his name was in the Epstein files. 'He's in the file! He's in the file!' Colbert chanted, rubbing his hands together and approaching the camera with a gleeful grin. 'You know how they say there's no such thing as bad publicity? They're not talkin' about this.' He went on to show a greatest-hits collection of Trump-Epstein photos, casually drop 'Micropenis DJT' into a list of fictional Trump nicknames, and roast Trump for the mathematical impossibility of his promised prescription-drug-price reductions. And then he circled back to 'how [Trump is] making my network crawl,' citing the President's claim that he would secure another $20 million in free airtime from CBS. 'By bending the knee, they lost like $40 million this year,' Colbert said. 'They better watch out. They might get canceled for purely financial reasons .' Colbert ended his show's four-day week, on Thursday, with more than eight minutes on the Epstein saga. First there was a cold open skit that used a montage of Three Stooges eye-poking clips to mock Attorney General Pam Bondi for citing a torn cornea as her reason for missing an awkwardly timed speaking engagement at a summit on sex trafficking. In his monologue, Colbert tore through the latest Trump-Epstein headlines ('What are you gonna tell me next—that the Pope is in the Catholic files? That a bear is on the cover of this month's Modern Woods Pooper ?'), from Epstein's evasiveness on Trump in a 2010 deposition to Mark Epstein's claim that his brother dumped Trump after deciding he was 'a crook' to the Ghislaine Maxwell of it all. When he finally moved off the topic, it was for a bit lampooning the President's recent statements on artificial intelligence that mostly seemed to be an excuse to direct viewers to Wednesday's already-notorious season premiere of South Park (also a Paramount property), which included an extremely NSFW parody PSA starring an uncanny, AI-generated Trump. I'd call this a mic drop, but I have a feeling Colbert will have plenty more to say come Monday. When you consider how litigious Trump has been with regard to practices that legal precedent supports as protected speech—of which satire and commentary are two—Colbert's stand is a risky one. But whether you think his response to The Late Show 's cancellation is brave or foolish, you can't deny that he's playing his cards perfectly against Paramount and CBS. If the powers that be pull him off the air before May 2026, he'll have all but proven that their decision to dump him was about more than the cost of making his show. 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UPI
27 minutes ago
- UPI
Ghislaine Maxwell set for second meeting with Deputy AG Todd Blanche
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The Hill
28 minutes ago
- The Hill
In the US, a factual National Archives still exists — but for how long?
When I arrived in New York City two years ago — a Russian journalist fleeing my country after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — I was routinely asked: 'Do all Russians support Putin?' A good question, perhaps, but I'm unable to provide a fact-based answer. When a regime like Russia silences the press, takes control of all branches of government and installs loyalists to oversee historical records, the truth quickly disappears, becoming accessible only to the ruler's inner circle. Since Trump's inauguration, conversations in the U.S. have changed. Now, when I meet Americans, they rarely mention Russian politics outside of the Ukraine war. Instead, they share their anxieties about their own country, often with a nervous laugh. I recognize that laugh. In Russia, independent journalists and human rights activists spent years laughing over worst-case scenarios — until every single one of them came true. My Ukrainian friends have become masters of gallows humor. Then Americans ask: 'What should we do? What advice do you, who have seen this happen in your country, have for us here in the U.S.?' This again makes me laugh, given we weren't exactly successful in stopping our own dictator. Still, hindsight does provide some clarity, and while I don't have immediate solutions, I do have two urgent suggestions: Safeguard your independent media and defend your national archives. The war in Ukraine shows how, without a strong independent press and by employing a warped version of history, a dictator can act however they please. While outsiders struggle to understand how Russians accept Putin's justification for the invasion as a mission to 'de-Nazify' Ukraine, a country led by a Jewish president, or as the reclamation of historically Russian territory (a claim that quickly unravels under serious historical scrutiny), the reality is that within Russia these narratives are now embedded in the national story. This is the result of a deliberate reshaping of the historical narrative by the government. Putin's first steps in controlling Russia's narrative was dismantling the post-Soviet independent media. It began with television, shuttering the independent NTV channel under the pretense of a business dispute. He then tightened his grip on the media through laws, including the ' foreign agent ' designation, jailing reporters he disagreed with. Three days after invading Ukraine in 2022, he imposed military censorship, forcing over 1,500 journalists into exile. Today, it is illegal for journalists to contradict the government's version of events. This is why, in 2023, a few fellow exiled journalists and I launched the Russian Independent Media Archive: to preserve the fact-based journalism the Kremlin was so intent on erasing. Today, the archive holds 3.5 million documents from 131 (and counting!) independent national, regional and investigative outlets dating back to Putin's first years in office. Designed to resist takedowns and censorship, with a powerful search engine, the Russian Independent Media Archive is open to all, empowering readers, researchers and historians to challenge propaganda about a particular era with truth, and to answer questions with verified facts. Others are better placed than I to say if a similar closing down of free speech and independent media is possible in the U.S.. The signs are certainly there in the Trump administration's accelerated book banning campaign, ending federal funding for NPR and PBS and shutting down Voice of America. Beyond that, Trump has unleashed a wave of chaotic actions that have directly harmed innocent people and disrupted businesses both in the U.S. and around the world — from mass deportations and abrupt firings to sweeping tariffs and threats of international conflict. Amid this endless barrage of harmful actions, one seemingly benign yet potentially extremely dangerous move risks slipping by unnoticed: Trump's bid to take control of the National Archives' leadership. Putin closed Russia's archives stealthily, cloaking his actions in language that maintained an illusion of transparency. In 2004, he signed a Federal Archives Law restricting access to anything labeled a 'state secret.' Today, that list includes 119 broad categories — enough to conceal almost anything from public view. As a result, we Russians no longer have access to a trusted record of our country's past. If Americans know the National Archives, it's usually as the home of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But it's much more than a home for documents. It safeguards billions of records vital to government transparency, public accountability, historical preservation, veterans' services and the integrity of elections. These documents hold facts upon which a great many important decisions are made. If access were restricted or content altered or erased, as is already happening on numerous government websites, truth, as in Russia, begins to disappear. For as Orwell presciently wrote in 1984, 'he who controls the past controls the future.' Covering tracks, destroying evidence, blocking websites, interfering in elections, distorting history — it's hard to say who does it better, Putin or Trump. But there's still a crucial difference between my country and yours: In the U.S., your institutions are intact enough that if I ask, 'Do all Americans support Trump?' you could still answer based on facts. The question now becomes: For how much longer?