Brian Beutler
@brianbeutler.bsky.social
Off Message, Politix.fm;
Formerly: Crooked Media, TNR, TPM; www.offmessage.net/subscribe
Formerly: Crooked Media, TNR, TPM; www.offmessage.net/subscribe
Reposted by Brian Beutler
If you ever groaned at a "both sides" treatment of an issue you care about, you might gain something from Brian's post.
Marty Baron's Post thrived because it took meaningful steps away from false balance, toward a defensible north star. As long as media execs insist financial pressures require wooing back right-wing audiences, why help them build a false sense that this is possible? www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 11:18 PM
If you ever groaned at a "both sides" treatment of an issue you care about, you might gain something from Brian's post.
Reposted by Brian Beutler
The gallup presidential approval poll is an institution in American politics that predates world war 2. With Trump’s approval in the 30s, they’re ending it. thehill.com/homenews/med...
February 11, 2026 at 7:43 PM
The gallup presidential approval poll is an institution in American politics that predates world war 2. With Trump’s approval in the 30s, they’re ending it. thehill.com/homenews/med...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
This militates for recommitting to the platonic ideal of journalism: a vocation of procedures that allows skilled workers to discover and broadcast the truth, and that relies on good but subjective judgment about which developments the public most needs to know.
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:33 PM
This militates for recommitting to the platonic ideal of journalism: a vocation of procedures that allows skilled workers to discover and broadcast the truth, and that relies on good but subjective judgment about which developments the public most needs to know.
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
Marty Baron's Post thrived because it took meaningful steps away from false balance, toward a defensible north star. As long as media execs insist financial pressures require wooing back right-wing audiences, why help them build a false sense that this is possible? www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:23 PM
Marty Baron's Post thrived because it took meaningful steps away from false balance, toward a defensible north star. As long as media execs insist financial pressures require wooing back right-wing audiences, why help them build a false sense that this is possible? www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
The sad irony is, many of these same newsrooms have sold themselves on a version of this critique. Many journalists also believe that the problem of right-wing distrust can only be remedied with more pandering, at the expense of the existing audience. Not so! www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:15 PM
The sad irony is, many of these same newsrooms have sold themselves on a version of this critique. Many journalists also believe that the problem of right-wing distrust can only be remedied with more pandering, at the expense of the existing audience. Not so! www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
What Bezos did was so shambolic because he lacked the courage of his convictions. Instead of owning his decision to gut the Post to curry favor with Trump, he blamed the staff for supposedly alienating half the country
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:13 PM
What Bezos did was so shambolic because he lacked the courage of his convictions. Instead of owning his decision to gut the Post to curry favor with Trump, he blamed the staff for supposedly alienating half the country
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
This militates for recommitting to the platonic ideal of journalism: a vocation of procedures that allows skilled workers to discover and broadcast the truth, and that relies on good but subjective judgment about which developments the public most needs to know.
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:33 PM
This militates for recommitting to the platonic ideal of journalism: a vocation of procedures that allows skilled workers to discover and broadcast the truth, and that relies on good but subjective judgment about which developments the public most needs to know.
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
Marty Baron's Post thrived because it took meaningful steps away from false balance, toward a defensible north star. As long as media execs insist financial pressures require wooing back right-wing audiences, why help them build a false sense that this is possible? www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:23 PM
Marty Baron's Post thrived because it took meaningful steps away from false balance, toward a defensible north star. As long as media execs insist financial pressures require wooing back right-wing audiences, why help them build a false sense that this is possible? www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
The sad irony is, many of these same newsrooms have sold themselves on a version of this critique. Many journalists also believe that the problem of right-wing distrust can only be remedied with more pandering, at the expense of the existing audience. Not so! www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:15 PM
The sad irony is, many of these same newsrooms have sold themselves on a version of this critique. Many journalists also believe that the problem of right-wing distrust can only be remedied with more pandering, at the expense of the existing audience. Not so! www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
What Bezos did was so shambolic because he lacked the courage of his convictions. Instead of owning his decision to gut the Post to curry favor with Trump, he blamed the staff for supposedly alienating half the country
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
February 11, 2026 at 10:13 PM
What Bezos did was so shambolic because he lacked the courage of his convictions. Instead of owning his decision to gut the Post to curry favor with Trump, he blamed the staff for supposedly alienating half the country
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
What's left of legacy media should draw lessons from watching Jeff Bezos adopt a false but widely held critique of mainstream journalism and use it as cover to sabotage the Washington Post. www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
A Requiem For The Old MSM
Time to go back to basics.
www.offmessage.net
February 11, 2026 at 10:09 PM
What's left of legacy media should draw lessons from watching Jeff Bezos adopt a false but widely held critique of mainstream journalism and use it as cover to sabotage the Washington Post. www.offmessage.net/p/a-requiem-...
Youtubin’ with Wags www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lyA...
Trump PANICS as MAGA Keeps Losing Ground
YouTube video by Runaway Country with Alex Wagner
www.youtube.com
February 11, 2026 at 6:45 PM
Youtubin’ with Wags www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lyA...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
I can’t prove it or anything, but I really think this began with mouth breathers posting videos of Black People Being Scary In Minneapolis or Fist Fights Involving Black People In Minneapolis many years before the pandemic. They had their eye on this city in particular for a long time.
February 11, 2026 at 12:57 PM
I can’t prove it or anything, but I really think this began with mouth breathers posting videos of Black People Being Scary In Minneapolis or Fist Fights Involving Black People In Minneapolis many years before the pandemic. They had their eye on this city in particular for a long time.
What the fresh hell?
FAA halts all flights to and from El Paso, Texas, and an area of southern New Mexico for 10 days over security concerns https://cnn.it/4rbdn0R
February 11, 2026 at 12:15 PM
What the fresh hell?
I think it’s hard for most people to fathom the answer to the question, Why Minneapolis? because most people aren’t acquainted with white nationalist twitter, which has been fixated on terrorizing MPLS’s black population for at least a decade. And now it’s an assignment editor for the Trump admin.
Our own government has done extraordinary damage to the economic and social fabric of this region, wreaking havoc for no discernible reason. It’s a terror campaign, not an immigration operation. It’s still happening.
February 11, 2026 at 11:59 AM
I think it’s hard for most people to fathom the answer to the question, Why Minneapolis? because most people aren’t acquainted with white nationalist twitter, which has been fixated on terrorizing MPLS’s black population for at least a decade. And now it’s an assignment editor for the Trump admin.
Reposted by Brian Beutler
The problem with them choosing this as their primary talking point is that nearly every in Minnesota personally knows someone who has been taken by ICE. And they all had either a spotless criminal record or an entirely non-violent one.
These are lies. They are going to lose. MN will not quit.
These are lies. They are going to lose. MN will not quit.
February 10, 2026 at 10:46 PM
The problem with them choosing this as their primary talking point is that nearly every in Minnesota personally knows someone who has been taken by ICE. And they all had either a spotless criminal record or an entirely non-violent one.
These are lies. They are going to lose. MN will not quit.
These are lies. They are going to lose. MN will not quit.
Reposted by Brian Beutler
Read this and keep fighting.
I don't know what setback or humiliation prompted that bizarre White House press release addressed to "Panicans" yesterday, but Trump is right to sense a lot of panic. It's growing. www.offmessage.net/p/trump-has-...
Trump Has Lost The Culture
And his greediest collaborators are awakening to the fact that they made a terrible bet.
www.offmessage.net
February 11, 2026 at 12:02 AM
Read this and keep fighting.
Reposted by Brian Beutler
Yep, good take. America never voted for Trumpism www.gelliottmorris.com/p/americans-...
February 10, 2026 at 10:02 PM
Yep, good take. America never voted for Trumpism www.gelliottmorris.com/p/americans-...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
“While the FBI field office in Boise initially said in a statement that claims of children being zip-tied were ‘completely false,’ officials there later amended that assertion, telling reporters that no ‘young’ children were zip-tied.”
www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-zi...
www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-zi...
A 14-year-old girl described being zip-tied during Idaho raid, sparking fresh questions about ICE tactics
A 14-year-old girl said she was "crying" and "struggling to breathe" when law enforcement officers herded her onto a racetrack with other detainees and zip-tied her hands.
www.cbsnews.com
February 10, 2026 at 10:52 PM
“While the FBI field office in Boise initially said in a statement that claims of children being zip-tied were ‘completely false,’ officials there later amended that assertion, telling reporters that no ‘young’ children were zip-tied.”
www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-zi...
www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-zi...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
They're calling it the most embarrassing op-ed of all time: The Louisiana SG, who has multiple cases pending before the Supreme Court right now, writing an essay about how his old boss, Justice Samuel Alito, is the nicest, smartest, bestest justice who ever lived www.foxnews.com/opinion/i-wo...
February 10, 2026 at 8:30 PM
They're calling it the most embarrassing op-ed of all time: The Louisiana SG, who has multiple cases pending before the Supreme Court right now, writing an essay about how his old boss, Justice Samuel Alito, is the nicest, smartest, bestest justice who ever lived www.foxnews.com/opinion/i-wo...
Reposted by Brian Beutler
The number of people and organizations who read a 1.5% popular vote margin as a permanent realignment and acted on it as though it was permanent will never stop stunning me.
The political dynamics of 2025 were shaped by Democrats and Republicans over-reading Trump's victory in the same way. That turns out to be a problem for a LOT of rich and powerful people who made a very large bet on the theory that MAGA had won the culture war. www.offmessage.net/p/trump-has-...
Trump Has Lost The Culture
And his greediest collaborators are awakening to the fact that they made a terrible bet.
www.offmessage.net
February 10, 2026 at 8:33 PM
The number of people and organizations who read a 1.5% popular vote margin as a permanent realignment and acted on it as though it was permanent will never stop stunning me.
Reposted by Brian Beutler
However big a problem it is for them let’s commit to making it an even bigger problem for them. Business schools in fifty years should teach this is how you lose your company and your wealth.
The political dynamics of 2025 were shaped by Democrats and Republicans over-reading Trump's victory in the same way. That turns out to be a problem for a LOT of rich and powerful people who made a very large bet on the theory that MAGA had won the culture war. www.offmessage.net/p/trump-has-...
Trump Has Lost The Culture
And his greediest collaborators are awakening to the fact that they made a terrible bet.
www.offmessage.net
February 10, 2026 at 8:11 PM
However big a problem it is for them let’s commit to making it an even bigger problem for them. Business schools in fifty years should teach this is how you lose your company and your wealth.
Reposted by Brian Beutler
"His collaborators are beginning to realize that they succumbed to irrational exuberance and made a huge bet on a lame horse."
Faced with cultural rebellion, all MAGA has left is to saber rattle at people who criticize Trump on the world stage. That was unbecoming, but not a sure loser, when Trump was at 50-50. Now that he's closer to 40-60, they're making themselves laughing stocks. www.offmessage.net/p/trump-has-...
February 10, 2026 at 7:57 PM
"His collaborators are beginning to realize that they succumbed to irrational exuberance and made a huge bet on a lame horse."