📺 Our new long form show
🗓 9/11 anniversary
🌳 Trees in D.C.
🗳 A failed gerrymandering attempt
Hi friends,
Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. And soon, I’ll also be writing on Dave’s long form show, “What’s Your Source?” If you didn’t catch his video about it earlier this week, it’s a show where viewers like you can call in, ask a question on whether something you’ve learned is real or if it’s misinformation, and we get to the bottom of it using the same humor, storytelling and cast of characters you already know from Dave’s shorter videos. Got a question you want us to answer? Give us a call!
I’ll also still be writing this newsletter. Your inbox can’t get rid of me that easily, so let’s dive in.
What did and didn’t happen on 9/11
Three days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Donald Trump shared misleading claims and outright lies about where he was and what he did during the attacks. He’s done this before. This time around, he said he “took the whole crew down there right after this happened,” before firefighters carried him away due to fears that another building would collapse. The story implies that he was at Ground Zero right after the attacks and had to be taken to a safer location, but previous reporting shows that Trump was miles away during the attacks. There’s also no evidence Trump was in an unstable building in the days after the attacks.
Misinformation around 9/11 is, of course, bigger than Trump. Conspiracy theories on who was responsible for the attacks persist 25 years later. Last year, a Republican senator called for hearings on debunked conspiracy theories about the attacks. On the twentieth anniversary of the attacks, the Council on Foreign Relations put together a resource guide for debunking conspiracies. It includes government reports and fact-checks from other news outlets.
There’s one particularly insidious form of misinformation that followed the attacks: false Islamophobic ideas that U.S. Muslims were responsible, leading to vigilante attacks, criminalization and mass deportations. This year, public figures like former Four Seasons Total Landscaping speaker Rudy Giuliani have called for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, to not attend a ceremony commemorating the attacks.
That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! Major anniversaries can bring large swaths of information. Here’s how to sort through it.
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What’s going on with D.C.’s cherry trees?
Recent social media posts have misleadingly claimed that the Trump administration cut down 60 cherry blossom trees in Washington, D.C. As a one-time enjoyer of many a cherry blossom-themed seasonal latte when I lived in D.C., I was alarmed. But as factcheck dot org reports, the posts’ claims aren’t entirely true.
But like lots of misinformation that spreads quickly online, there were some kernels of truth that added fuel to the fire. Trump has promised to overhaul a golf course in D.C., and The Washington Post reported that plans for it appear to not show a grove of cherry trees that currently stands in the area. Two months later, The Post also reported that over 60 trees appear to have been removed as part of what the Interior Department is calling “routine maintenance.”
So if the plans for the course didn’t show the cherry trees, and the course is missing 60 trees, doesn’t that prove that Trump’s golf course got rid of the cherry trees? Not exactly. The more recent Post article says one cherry tree was removed, as were two sycamores. It doesn’t specify what the other removed trees were. It’s not my job to tell you whether to be mad or not mad about that cherry tree, but it is my job to tell you that there’s no proof of the administration removing 60 cherry trees.
You’ve just answered a long standing question for me, ‘what does Ira Glass look like?’ Strong start!
An update on gerrymandering in Missouri
Confused? So were voters in Missouri, many of whom weren’t sure up until this Supreme Court order which congressional district they’d be in for November’s elections. The redrawn map would have benefitted Republicans, and it was used in the state’s primary elections last month.
The AP reports that none of the U.S. Supreme Court justices publicly dissented from the order against the new map, and the order doesn’t include their legal reasoning. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been a key player in this saga. He’s in charge of appeals from the circuit that includes Missouri, and when Hoskins asked if the U.S. Supreme Court could pretty please tell the state Supreme Court that this kind of gerrymandering is fine, actually, Kavanaugh said no.
Anyway, remember how Hoskins was told by one court to use the new map and told by another to not use it? Kind of like how you ask your dad about eating ice cream for dinner when your mom says no? Well, the state Supreme Court that said he can’t use the new gerrymandered map held a contempt hearing over Hoskins’ refusal to follow its order. After that hearing, Hoskins said he wouldn’t use the redrawn map. Instead, he’ll use Missouri’s old congressional map that keeps a blue Kansas City-area district intact.
Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!
It’s a “hot take corner” today, folks, buckle up! Okay, maybe medium take. Email me after you read it and let me know your thoughts and what level of spiciness to apply to it. I’m at [email protected], or you can just respond directly to this email.
The FCC is keeping late night TV alive.
Wait a second. Let me explain. I have a better long-winded explanation than whatever the hell Sean Duffy was talking about in that resurfaced clip from 2024.
It’s important that I explain just how big a fan I’ve been of late night shows. When I was in high school, I found an old black and white TV stashed away in the basement. The antenna still worked and it got four or five local Kansas City channels. Almost every night, I would watch David Letterman then Craig Ferguson … in black and white.
High definition TV already existed! But I wanted so badly to watch these shows and study them in the comfort of my room, that the grainy color-less format didn’t matter (and when TV stations turned off their analog signals in 2009, I watched Letterman one last time then waited for the signal to drop).
Part of the reason I chose to attend DePauw University was because I found out they had potential internship connections at Colbert Report and The Daily Show. Eventually, I did get a Colbert internship. In a magical full-circle moment, as we prepare to launch “What’s Your Source?” next week on YouTube, our crack team includes two former (and Emmy award-winning!) Late Show with Stephen Colbert writers.
So it’s well established that I love late night. I love the immediacy of it. The rush to air a show every weeknight. The eager audience. All of it. I also have not watched a full episode of a traditional late night show in several years. Like many of you, I watch it in YouTube and TikTok clips. The only show I do fully watch is John Oliver, and that’s because he puts 90% of every episode on YouTube.
You can probably guess where I’m going with this. Our TV-viewing habits have changed. With the exception of sports, we don’t wait for a specific time to watch our shows. We know it will stream later (or instantly) and there will be millions of ways to watch it. There’s no reason for me to go to great lengths to watch a late night show because I’ll be able to find it later on my phone or laptop. Late night shows suffered the most from the loss of “appointment television.” So much of the fun was saying to your co-worker or friend the next day that “you had to be there.”
At last, I’m getting to the point:
I have never watched Jimmy Kimmel more than when the FCC and Trump administration try to interfere.
I like Jimmy Kimmel! I like his monologues. I loved his “sorry Matt Damon couldn’t make it” bit that went on for years. I consider myself a fan in the sense that I’ve probably devoted quite a few hours to him before streaming took over. But now, I wait for them to find me in my social feeds.
Now Kimmel says he has decided to stream an interview with Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico on YouTube instead of airing it on ABC because of threats from the FCC. In February, Colbert said CBS network executives pulled his interview with Talarico for The Late Show, publishing only to YouTube, over fears of violating equal time regulations. I’m suddenly far more interested in catching his upcoming monologues on the topic live, or at the very least, watching them in full on YouTube early the next morning. This isn’t just me. The numbers prove it. Whenever Trump tries to interfere, Kimmel’s viewership skyrockets.
Look at those numbers!
In this dying industry, the people keeping late night alive are the ones trying to kill it faster. When Paramount pushed Colbert out, in what many believe was a calculated political move aimed at pleasing the president, it just made people love Colbert even more and engage more with his show until it ended. With Kimmel, the Trump administration keeps setting him up with ridiculous rulings that he consistently picks apart and destroys in monologues.
If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, I am rooting for late night and what comes from it. Realistically, it just needs to evolve more for a digital audience. In our own way, we will be replicating the breakneck speed of turning around a show with our small team at “What’s Your Source?” posting on a more accessible platform. In the meantime, I’ll be watching more Kimmel this week. I’m very invested in the drama (thanks, FCC?).
If you made it all the way down here, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Kiko!
eeeeepy sleepy just like me
The second is the reveal for this newsletter’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news link every week in the body of this email and tell you where it is down here. This week, when writing about Missouri’s congressional maps, I linked out to the “I’m The Map” song from “Dora the Explorer,” which will be stuck in my head until I write next week’s newsletter.
Until then!
Chris
