CBS, Barry Weiss, and the Collapse of Media Credibility in the Post-MAGA Power Struggle

Barry Weiss at CBS News is not an anomaly. She is a symptom.

CBS is no longer a functioning journalism outlet. 60 Minutes—once the gold standard of investigative reporting—is effectively gone. What now exists is a propaganda network propped up by billionaire interests and political loyalty, not by editorial integrity. Journalism, at this point, survives only in independent media.

That reality was made unmistakably clear when Sharon Alfonsi, a correspondent for 60 Minutes, sent an internal email revealing that CBS editor-in-chief Barry Weiss spiked a fully vetted investigative story about the Trump administration transferring detainees from the United States to a prison in El Salvador.

According to Alfonsi, the story was screened five times and cleared by CBS lawyers and standards-and-practices. It was factually sound. Yet Weiss refused to air it—and refused even to discuss the decision. Alfonsi described the move as political rather than editorial, comparing it to one of the most infamous moments in broadcast journalism: CBS’s suppression of the Jeffrey Wigand tobacco whistleblower interview in the 1990s.

That decision nearly destroyed CBS’s credibility then. This one may finish the job now.

Why? Because forcibly removing people from U.S. soil without due process and imprisoning them in foreign countries draws unavoidable historical parallels—parallels to some of the darkest chapters of the 20th century. Suppressing coverage of such actions is not caution. It is complicity.

Barry Weiss’s decision is not just unethical; it is historically dangerous. It reflects a worldview that cherry-picks human rights—protecting some while abandoning others—and that mindset has never ended well.

And this is all happening while CBS sponsors, including Bank of America, bankroll town halls and programming that sanitize and normalize authoritarian behavior. That matters. Corporations respond to pressure. If viewers continue funding propaganda through their accounts and credit cards, nothing changes. If they don’t, everything does.

Boycotts work. They always have.

But the CBS scandal does not exist in isolation. It is directly linked to the implosion currently unfolding inside MAGA—and the fight over what comes after Trump.

Trump, by any objective measure, is fading. He is aging, visibly deteriorating, and no longer the singular gravitational force he once was. The real battle now is not about loyalty to Trump—it’s about positioning for the post-Trump future.

And that future may be worse.

Trump was always the Trojan horse: a blunt, vulgar figure used to consolidate executive power, weaken democratic institutions, and normalize cruelty. Once that work was done, he became disposable. The real project is what comes next—and that includes controlling the media.

That is why stories like the CBS investigation are being buried. Not to protect Trump, but to protect the next phase.

At Turning Point USA’s recent convention, that next phase was on full display. Infighting erupted openly. Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene—everyone is attacking everyone else. The question they are fighting over is simple: who inherits the cult?

Ben Shapiro’s role in this moment is especially revealing.

Shapiro is perfectly comfortable with racism, misogyny, transphobia, attacks on immigrants, and anti-Black rhetoric. He tolerated and promoted all of it when Candace Owens worked for him. The only line he draws is criticism of Israel.

That matters.

When someone is willing to participate in broad-based bigotry but seeks refuge for one group within a racist movement, they are making a catastrophic miscalculation. White supremacist movements do not suddenly stop being racist because a Jewish conservative joins them. They turn eventually—always.

Shapiro helped incubate the very ecosystem that now threatens him. He platformed Owens. He legitimized grievance politics. And now, as anti-Semitism grows louder within MAGA, he is discovering that he is not the exception.

He is not the “magic Jew” who stops the knives.

Steve Bannon has already called him a cancer. Tucker Carlson barely conceals his contempt. Marjorie Taylor Greene is openly repositioning herself, signaling allegiance not to Trump but to Tucker—clearly framing him as the heir apparent.

Her messaging is subtle but unmistakable: Ben Shapiro is out, elites are in the crosshairs, Epstein files are still being protected, and Trump barely gets mentioned. This is not accidental. It is a transition strategy.

Tucker Carlson is charismatic, media-savvy, and deeply dangerous. He communicates extremism in palatable doses—30 seconds of “reasonable” commentary sandwiched between culture-war outrage and soft-focus propaganda. That is how radicalization works now.

JD Vance may be the institutional favorite, but Tucker is the emotional one. And emotional power wins cults.

What ties all of this together—from CBS to Turning Point to the Epstein files—is a complete abandonment of universal human rights. Human rights are interconnected. You cannot sacrifice Palestinians, immigrants, trans people, women, or Black Americans and expect Jewish people to remain safe. Hatred does not stop where you want it to.

Barry Weiss, Ben Shapiro, and others like them are learning this too late. By defending selective morality and partnering with extremists, they have made everyone—including themselves—more vulnerable.

This is not just the collapse of MAGA. It is the exposure of what MAGA was always building toward.

And unless independent journalism survives—and unless people are willing to withdraw money, attention, and legitimacy from propaganda networks—the next phase will be worse than the last.

The warning signs are no longer subtle.

They are screaming.