"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
That, I am told, is what journalists were told as they entered the business. Not having checked this out, I can't say if that is true, but the lesson it teaches certainly is: skepticism is an essential tool of the journalist who wants to do the job right.
Journalists should, of course, be skeptical of everything, but especially so when it comes to dealing with government officials who have a great deal of money and power, and whose mis- or malfeasance can have devastating impacts on lives and on the health of society.
Add up all levels of government and the NGO complex, and well over 40% of the US economy is accounted for. That is trillions upon trillions of dollars, dwarfing the size of the big businesses that everybody is so worried about.
Yet if you were to listen to Pravda, government is, at least in cases where the party of government, the Democrats, are involved, the only thing you need to know about it is that it is doing a wonderful job and really just needs a lot more money.
Sure, Republicans who are skeptical of government are evil Nazis who want people to die starving in the streets, and they should all be thrown in jail if they are not named Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney (who were evil until they critiqued Republicans, of course), but Democrats are moral exemplars and sharp as a tack.
So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that after Nick Shirley, whose viral video sparked a nationwide examination of the fraud that has resulted in half of all Medicaid expenditures being stolen in Minnesota, did his investigation, the media had one and only one focus: debunk Shirley.
The "debunkings" were a joke. As in the equivalent of Saturday Night Live skits, but it was important to give the talking point ASAP, so they did what they could.
I'm not sure the viral critique of Minnesota day cares is totally accurate.
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) December 31, 2025
I am certain that *according to the government, there's no fraud in this government-funded program* is the farthest thing from journalism. https://t.co/cZHGXerblJ
CBS, for instance, sent a reporter to...read a government website to claim that everything was just great.
Since one of the accusations, made not just by Shirley, but the actual f'ing US Attorney prosecuting these cases, is that the way the programs were designed was to facilitate fraud, I would suggest that going to the perpetrators to ask if they were guilty is not quite an in-depth investigation.
— The Drunk Republican (@DrunkRepub) January 1, 2026
Which is, by the way, EXACTLY what CNN did. Their reporter called the accused and asked if they were frauds. They said no, so case is closed. Debunked!
CNN called Minnesota daycare facilities and asked them if they are legit businesses.
— Anthony Pompliano 🌪 (@APompliano) December 31, 2025
When the businesses said “yes,” CNN reported that the businesses were legit.
They should call criminals next and ask “are you a criminal??” pic.twitter.com/nK2fCIzeYy
CNN is on the case. So much so that Abby Phillips will lie to her audience and shout at Scott Jennings when he says the most obviously true thing in the world, because defending Democrats is the most important thing.
Scott Jennings: Tim Walz is calling efforts to investigate fraud “white supremacy”
— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) December 31, 2025
CNN panel: *Explodes* “No he has not said that”
Video of Tim Walz saying efforts to investigate fraud are akin to white supremacy
pic.twitter.com/qpCOjQ1Upr
What is striking about all this is not so much that they are exercising skepticism—if they do their jobs, they would of course look at Shirley's claims, which by the laws of averages alone might have one or two misinterpretations of the evidence given that he spent one day doing his videos, but that they are utterly incurious about the fact that his larger point is obviously right.
After all, daycare frauds have already been proven, Feeding Our Future is the biggest (so far) COVID scam in the country, the United States Attorney just said that billions of dollars of fraud are happening, and even the bureaucrats have said everything is on the honor system.
This could be the most pathetic reporting I have seen. The reporter calls the daycare centers to ask them if they are legitimate. I kid you not. How is this supposed to determine whether fraud is taking place? Are they expecting the centers to say ‘Yes. We are committing fraud.’… https://t.co/8Eboiw3luh
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 31, 2025
This could be the most pathetic reporting I have seen. The reporter calls the daycare centers to ask them if they are legitimate. I kid you not. How is this supposed to determine whether fraud is taking place? Are they expecting the centers to say ‘Yes. We are committing fraud.’
Six of seven don’t even answer the phone.
The media has and continues to fail us.
The media refuses to look into any of that. Instead, they go after somebody exposing the obvious because their job is to defend government spending and the Democrat-money complex that keeps the whole system going.
Minnesota state government is STILL funneling money to the Feeding Our Future fraudsters, just through programs such as adult daycare, child care, autism centers, and transportation services. Is that not worth reporting?
Wow. Five of the 10 Somali day cares in Minnesota that @nickshirleyy visited were registered “meal sites” for the unprecedented Feeding Our Future Somali fraud. Those five day cares received nearly $5m from Feeding Our Future. The nonprofit stole atleast $250m of public money to…
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2026
No, it is not. "Debunking" the truth is what is necessary, and doing so in the laziest, most ridiculous ways appears to be enough because they control the information flow.
Or at least they assume they do.
Pravda is so corrupt that it never occurs to them that anybody would notice that they are circling the wagons around the government, whom they moralistically lecture to us they watch over like hawks.
It is a scam. I don't just mean the daycare frauds. I mean the whole elite complex from academia to media to government to NGOs. It is, without a doubt, a corrupt edifice that is in danger of collapse.
A year before the Soviet Union collapsed, few thought that it was in danger. Everybody knew it was creaky and corrupt, but it looked more than strong enough to survive.
The reason why there has been a decade-long war on Trump is that he is an existential threat to their corrupt structure.
It is by no means a sure thing that Trump can topple this massive, multi-trillion-dollar organized crime ring. And, to be honest, I worry that once it is toppled, we will live in rubble, since we need academia, a functioning government, and even a functional elite.
But social trust is collapsing, and we need a rebirth, or we face a decline and fall. And in order to get there, we must destroy the rotten structure that is in power today.
- Editor’s Note: Every single day, here at Hot Air, we will stand up and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT against the radical left and deliver the conservative reporting our readers deserve. Sometimes, however, we just point and laugh, and let the radical Left embarrass itself. This is one of those times.
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