Sign in

john whitehouse

@existentialfish.com
5K followers 1.1K following 250 posts

@ media matters. this is a personal account. everything is real but it's also just as fake

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by john whitehouse
Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 22h
I think about this interview with the distinguished philosopher Conan O'Brien a lot. I actually think this is a healthy way to live your life! www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/a...
Is this how you want to go out, with a show that gets smaller and smaller until it’s gone?

Maybe that’s O.K. I think you have more of a problem with that than I do. [Laughs.] At this point in my career, I could go out with a grand, 21-gun salute, and climb into a rocket and the entire Supreme Court walks out and they jointly press a button, I’m shot up into the air and there’s an explosion and it’s orange and it spells, “Good night and God love.” In this culture? Two years later, it’s going to be, who’s Conan? This is going to sound grim, but eventually, all our graves go unattended.

You’re right, that does sound grim.

Sorry. Calvin Coolidge was a pretty popular president. I’ve been to his grave in Vermont. It has the presidential seal on it. Nobody was there. And by the way, I’m the only late-night host that has been to Calvin Coolidge’s grave. I think that’s what separates me from the other hosts.

I had a great conversation with Albert Brooks once. When I met him for the first time, I was kind of stammering. I said, you make movies, they live on forever. I just do these late-night shows, they get lost, they’re never seen again and who cares? And he looked at me and he said, [Albert Brooks voice] “What are you talking about? None of it matters.” None of it matters? “No, that’s the secret. In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten.” It’s so funny because you’d think that would depress me. I was walking on air after that.
111465305
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 21h
The underlying theory Senate Republicans are going with is that Joe Biden secretly ordered DOJ to investigate Trump, something they have produced no evidence to support and also they're all fine with Trump publicly ordering DOJ to investigate his enemies.
25592168
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 24/09/2026
incredible things are happening in spanish language right-wing media
Screenshot of a Media Matters article headlined “Cada Tarde guest: ‘I regret having helped President Trump.’” A subheading quotes Esteban Gerbasi saying it causes him “enormous pain” to see what is being done to the Latino community. Below, a video thumbnail shows two radio hosts on the left and Gerbasi on a video call on the right.text of a transcript:

ESTEBAN GERBASI (GUEST): We have the right and obligation to demand that the administration of President Trump corrects course, and above all in the case of Venezuela, that they withdraw from that useless war in Iran, that they dedicate themselves to governing here, to improve the economy, they have yet to lower interest rates. 

... 

(highlighting begins) I don’t need to explain to you listeners, because you go in your cars thinking about how you’re going to make it through the month. And it causes me enormous pain, enormous, to see what I'm seeing them do to the Latino community. I have solidarity with them, I want to it to be known that today I publicly say I regret having helped President Trump, because I never would have believed I would pay for that with what they are doing to Venezuelans who are asking for protection and asylum in this country and are persecuted as though they were criminals. (highlighting ends) And they're not. They already captured Tren de Aragua members, those with criminal records can go. Those who tricked and lied in order to get asylum, they can get captured and cast out. But here we have a working and decent community, where if you travel the country as I do for my work, what you find are people working two or three jobs to keep their family afloat.
16919
Reposted by john whitehouse
Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Again, this is what Tucker says to normal audiences. To his own audience, literally today, he went on a deranged rant about, among other things, how Oswald Mosley wasn’t a Nazi.
I know, buddy, you did that during World War II. When the very first thing the British government did was imprison the opposition party, called them Nazis, which they weren't, run by one of the great war heroes of the First World War, Oswald Mosley. Oh, he was a Nazi.
No, he wasn't. If he was a Nazi, he'd be living in Britain, in Germany. He didn't want the war.
And he has been slandered ever since. It's like scary even to defend him. I'm not even defending the guy.
51757246
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Earlier this year, Tucker Carlson said that “the defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated.” Journos who don’t watch his show are helping his effort to rebrand so he isn’t a liability for his protege JD Vance’s 2028 run. www.mediamatters.org/jd-vance/tuc...
mediamatters.org
Tucker Carlson helped make JD Vance. The VP refuses to condemn his antisemitism.
30895285
Reposted by john whitehouse
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It’s not that this story has not gotten attention, but this is the sort of story that Fox and NewsMax would have turned into a cultural touchstone under a Dem by running for weeks, darkly hinting at a conspiracy
11818163
Reposted by john whitehouse
Sophie Lawton 🇵🇸 @slawton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
they're catching on
mediamatters.org
Steve Bannon guest James Rickards says "Trump's credibility on the whole subject of Iran is pretty close to zero."
34612
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
He's helping to raise huge sums of money to back Senate candidates who will vote for Trump's judicial nominees, not much of a "rebuke."
25959138
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
lol ok
1442167
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
John Cornyn and George W. Bush are teaming up to make sure that Donald Trump gets the cronies, mediocrities and ideologues he wants in lifetime appointments to the courts.
28574143
Reposted by john whitehouse
Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Headline is not as strongly worded as the quote.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law," Mr. Saul, a professor of international law at Australia's University of Sydney, concluded.
11096298
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 21/09/2026
DIE HARD 2 (1990) Renny Harlin
020
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 18/09/2026
sobering and worrying but at least we have [checks notes] the former weekend host of fox & friends at the helm
032
Reposted by john whitehouse
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 18/09/2026
i'm not over Alito saying we shouldn't count ballots that are mailed on or before Election Day but arrive shortly afterwards bc they can “radically flip” the “apparent outcome” cannot stress enough that, until all ballots are counted, there's no outcome to flip! ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/alito...
ballsandstrikes.org
A Brief History of Sam Alito’s Delusional Obsession With Voter Fraud
His conduct in several recent cases suggests that Alito is deep in the right-wing conspiracy theory weeds.
409104902650
Reposted by john whitehouse
sam @samthielman.com · 18/09/2026
He's done it before, he can do it again!
1314
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Fox News is the only major cable news network not to cover its own contributor Karl Rove's warning about a rising tide of racism and antisemitism within the Republican Party. www.mediamatters.org/karl-rove/fo...
mediamatters.org
Fox News hides contributor Karl Rove’s warning about the GOP’s “growing number of Bo Frenches”
26649201
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Suboptimal that the president is a fucking moron.
1963867609
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 16/09/2026
reality of the midterms seems to be sinking in www.mediamatters.org/election-den...
mediamatters.org
Steve Bannon’s guest admits that a national emergency declaration on elections would likely be overturned by the Supreme Court
012524
Reposted by john whitehouse
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
For these guys, it was never about illegal immigration, it was never about cultural assimilation. You can be born in America, drinking beer as you cheer on the Longhorns, but its not enough if you are not white.
48787213
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Benny Johnson and Jack Posobiec defended Bo French’s racist post, saying that “there’s nothing wrong with wanting Texas to stay Texas” and “I don't see anything hateful about it” www.mediamatters.org/benny-johnso...
mediamatters.org
MAGA media back GOP nominee’s racist social media post complaining about nonwhite college students in Texas
8638084
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Stop being so cynical about the six-figure gift to the president's son, people give him gifts like that all the time!!
86941193
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Compare to Fox News ratings for last month -- there was basically no bump from regular programming. www.adweek.com/tvnewser/her...
ratings
516934
Reposted by john whitehouse
Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Too many people online seem to conflate left politics with being obnoxious and scathing and Mamdani is such a model for combining a principled ideological vision with civility and grace. You shake hands, you act like a grown up even whether others aren’t. You show up.
29780801266
Reposted by john whitehouse
Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio) @kleinman.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Looking at his life there were basically three things that he did right and that you can try to do leftishly
57723
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 10/09/2026
lot of times discussion (esp here) gravitates towards ideology of this or that, but sometimes things are less ideological and more just that a lot of cynicism curdles the brain
010
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 09/09/2026
Benny Johnson says gas prices will be “around $2 a gallon” by the midterm elections

Johnson: “The gas prices are going to go back to where the median gas prices fundamentally are, which is around $2 a gallon. ... This is something that's going to happen by the midterms.”


Published 05/11/26
090
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I think that’s true, and it’s a real asymmetry with consequences. The right never gets bored like that. The WSJ published a six-volume set of its Whitewater editorial. Sean Hannity will talk about Hillary’s emails or Benghazi or Hunter Biden endlessly, shamelessly, and until it has an impact.
916324
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
This is a very strong piece about the media double standard. I'll add, though, that there seems to be very little interest on the left lately in the object-level coverage and criticism of the GOP's ties to extremists that would signal to reporters that it should be a major story.
28707177
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
You can just do things (write articles about the GOP's connections to far-right antisemites then post about them here). www.mediamatters.org/jd-vance/jd-...
mediamatters.org
JD Vance’s wildly disingenuous response to his Tucker Carlson problem
08819
Reposted by john whitehouse
Madeline Peltz @peltzmadeline.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
My latest: Turning Point USA’s upcoming campus tour features influencer Joshua Haymes, a Christian nationalist who believes women shouldn’t have the right to vote and Hitler was “misunderstood” numbertwopencil.substack.com/p/turning-po...
02610
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Speaking of grotesque MAGA associations, JD Vance was asked yesterday about Tucker Carlson's antisemitism promotion and dodged the question because he owes his political success to the former Fox host. www.mediamatters.org/jd-vance/tuc...
mediamatters.org
Tucker Carlson helped make JD Vance. The VP refuses to condemn his antisemitism.
523746
Reposted by john whitehouse
Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
You know who else has compared COVID to 9/11? Greg Gutfeld. Neil Cavuto. Donald Trump. (And thanks to @johnknefel.bsky.social who put this list together via www.mediamatters.org/cbs/embracin...)
Contrary to CBS News' innuendo, many public figures compared the death tolls of COVID and 9/11.

In April 2020, President Donald Trump's surgeon general said the pandemic would be "our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment." Andrew Cuomo, then governor of New York, said in March 2020 that COVID "reminds me of 9/11 where one moment, which was inconceivable, just changed everything." In May 2020, Trump said: "This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this." In January 2021, Dr. Robert Redfield, then the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said "that we were going to be in for day after day after day - back in early December, of losing more people than we lost in Pearl Harbor and 9/11 every day." Fox News' Neil Cavuto: "Yesterday, we had a record number of deaths in this country, more than died on 9/11." Fox News' Greg Gutfeld: "In that case, this virus is much like 9/11. ... So we have to think about this the same way we think about terrorism and thinking about 9/11." Like El-Sayed, comedian Chris Rock hoped that the government would respond forcefully to the pandemic. "I just hope that all that's happened, that this whole year was not in vain, and that people and the government doesn't just go back to business as usual," he said in December 2020. "Like, basically, there's a 9/11 every day."
643679
Reposted by john whitehouse
John Knefel @johnknefel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
CBS News trying to manufacture a scandal out of drawing comparisons between the pandemic and 9/11 death tolls. The thing is, that point of comparison was incredibly common at the time. It was everywhere, and trying to smear El-Sayed now is disgusting, if totally predictable under Weiss and Ellison
mediamatters.org
Embracing blatant Islamophobia, CBS News makes bizarre attempt to tie El-Sayed to 9/11
1122669
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
A far-right ethnonationalist movement turning the machinery of the state against its early activists once they are deemed insufficiently loyal — now I’ve heard everything.
1504803958
Reposted by john whitehouse
John Knefel @johnknefel.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
By any objective measure, Trump has failed in his war of aggression against Iran. But, what if the opposite was true? What if victory was at hand? That would really be something. Luckily for the White House, that alternative reality is just one right-wing cable news program or MAGA livestream away
mediamatters.org
The delusional right-wing media figures declaring victory in Iran
44215
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Explicit call for ethnonationalist purges -- and while Bovino is publicly mad at the administration, they're doing more to carry out this strategy now than they were when he was working there.
nytimes chart
12266103
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
When you question why Topic A isn't getting as much attention as Topic B, ask yourself: Have I personally been extremely focused on following every twist and turn of Topic B, devouring content on it and chiming in on my own platforms, while ignoring Topic A?
1783
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The thing about complaining that Topic A isn't getting as much attention as Topic B is that if you yourself aren't driving attention to Topic B you end up keeping the focus on Topic A (and revealing that you actually care more about Topic A than Topic B).
417419
Reposted by john whitehouse
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The grand jury report on the Florida embezzlement scheme is blood-boiling. It's clear beyond serious dispute that the current AG of Florida was part of a shameless, calculated plan to steal public funds from sick children to gift the Republican Party & his own PAC. drive.google.com/file/d/15YSC...
drive.google.com
Grand_Jury_Report.pdf
6693300
Reposted by john whitehouse
Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 27/08/2026
look these people are all crooks
331455
Reposted by john whitehouse
Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
No one has explained to me how popularism and deliverism are supposed to work if this is how a nontrivial share of swing voters understand the issues
740652
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 22/08/2026
i think it's bad that military spouses are hesitant to speak up about horrific conditions due to "fear of reprisal"
One spouse of an active-duty sailor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the repeated displacement has traumatized her children. The family first fled to a U.S. base in Germany, where donations from the local military community helped them set up a temporary household. They were later told they had to relocate again, this time to the United States. The spouse is now living in a short-term rental without the family’s car or furniture, which remain in Bahrain with her husband. She has been receiving per diem payments, which include daily reimbursement for meals and other essentials. Those funds will be replaced by a housing allowance after safe-haven benefits expire, but she is still struggling to find child care, medical care and basic necessities such as pantry staples.  She said her kids are developing “serious behavior” issues as a result of the move, and that the youngest now barely recognizes her husband during video calls. “I would go back to Bahrain tomorrow if my husband weren’t worried about that decision affecting his career and our financial future,” she told Stars and Stripes. 

Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2026-08-21/bahrain-evacuation-military-families-navy-22618186.html
Source - Stars and Stripes
0105
Reposted by john whitehouse
Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio) @kleinman.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I'm so happy for Paul Krugman, who seems to have gotten even better since he left the Times
213414
Reposted by john whitehouse
Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio) @kleinman.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
It rules that we have a Treasury Secretary who can't sell bonds, a Defense Secretary who can't win a war and an Attorney General who can't enforce the law
0571152
Reposted by john whitehouse
Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Right-wing media calling a view “far left” is a fairly reliable signal that it isn’t: That it’s a broadly popular position they need to telegraph to their own audience they’re not supposed to agree with.
36823
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
A problem they have is there's a real dearth of stories for the right-wing influencer class to talk about right now that unify their audiences because Trump's presidency has been a total disaster. This is also what feeds the WNBA obsession, etc. What are they going to talk about, the Iran war?
141080177
john whitehouse @existentialfish.com · 18/08/2026
hasn't really hit most people how this fundamentally will matter but it's unavoidable and will be Very Bad and Incredibly Frustrating even in the best case scenario
01009
Reposted by john whitehouse
Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Yes, we seem to be moving toward an economic paradigm not seen in several decades.
721740
Reposted by john whitehouse
Elon Green @elongreen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is --
Tyrone: 27%.
John: ... you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy.
But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him.
They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
26213