The Watchdog with David Bozell

I want you to meet Chamath Palihapitiya.

He's a billionaire venture capitalist, former Facebook executive, and co-host of the wildly popular All-In podcast.

He's not an MRC researcher. He's not a conservative activist. And for years, he believed what the media told him about Donald Trump.

Then he went back and watched the tape.

“The reality is that most of us were lied to by the media about President Trump,” Chamath said yesterday on CNBC.

His words, not mine.

Chamath specifically went back and watched President Trump's remarks after Charlottesville. You remember the story the media told us: Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.”

We heard it for years. Joe Biden practically built a presidential campaign around it.

Except Trump didn't say it.

In the very same remarks, President Trump explicitly said:

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

Chamath watched the full remarks and came to a pretty remarkable conclusion:

“We got it TOTALLY, totally wrong. We were lied to.”

Welcome to our world, Chamath.

For nearly four decades, the Media Research Center has been going back to the tape. We record the broadcasts. We count the stories. We study the coverage. And time after time, we find exactly what Chamath just discovered for himself.

The media don't simply get Donald Trump wrong. They have waged a relentless campaign of character assassination against him.

In the final months of the 2024 campaign, MRC researchers found ABC, CBS, and NBC gave President Trump 85% negative coverage.

When President Trump returned to the White House, the networks somehow managed to get worse.

92% negative.

You almost have to admire the commitment.

So I understand Chamath's frustration when he asks why there have been “no repercussions.”

But I would respectfully disagree with him on one point.

There have been repercussions.

Jim Acosta is gone from CNN. Joy Reid lost her MSNBC show. Terry Moran is gone from ABC News. NPR and PBS defunded.

And at CBS, the changes have been extraordinary. Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi, and Cecilia Vega have all been fired from 60 Minutes.

CBS itself is under new corporate ownership and being remade before our eyes. CNN may soon face its own corporate upheaval.

Then there are the viewers.

CNN's primetime audience fell 16% in 2025, including a 31% collapse among the coveted 25-to-54 demographic. MSNBC's primetime audience plunged 25%, with a 40% collapse in the key demographic.

Those sound like repercussions to me.

For years, the liberal media operated as if there would never be a price for misleading the American people. They could take a sentence, strip away the context, repeat the distortion a million times, and stain a man's character.

Charlottesville may be the most infamous example. It was hardly the only one.

Chamath figured it out by going back to the original source material.

He checked their work.

At MRC, that's what we do every single day.

And I believe the consequences we're seeing now are happening because millions of Americans have finally figured out the same thing Chamath did:

We were lied to.

Take it easy, 

David Bozell
President