Inside CECOT – 60 Minutes [video]

https://archive.org/details/insidececot

by lawlessone • 7 months ago

1679 377 7 months ago

archive.org

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/12/23/6...

kg• 7 months ago

For context, this report was suppressed by CBS News' new leadership, most likely to appease the US government.

owlninja• 7 months ago

A little more context if needed (free link):

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump...

scratchyone3• 7 months ago

I have a feeling this will get DMCA-ed off of Internet Archive in an attempt to suppress it. Here's the infohash of the archive.org torrent download for future reference, this should allow the file to be retrieved in any torrent client as long as someone in the world is seeding it still.

8105370ed7dba50dc7ec659fd67550569b4dd8a0

evil-olive• 7 months ago

here it is, in magnet link form:

    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:734abc77f48d11c78543c52004b6f57db71d6d92&dn=60minutes-cecotsegment&xl=1483256352&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&ws=http://ia601703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=http://ia801703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=https://archive.org/download/

(exported from my currently-seeding torrent client, then pasted into a separate torrent client, to verify that it works correctly)

ProllyInfamous2• 7 months ago

Hey there seed buddy... I'm about to become the fourth web seed.

We're not going anywhere.

—Hydra

JakeStone• 7 months ago

It's ridiculous that this has to be done.

I'm honestly speechless. But thanks for the magnet link.

vlachen3• 7 months ago

I left the high seas many years ago, but I'm down to seed for a cause.

What's the best torrent client nowadays?

UltraSane6• 7 months ago

I'm seeing 1813 seeds right now

mrjay422• 7 months ago

Seeding :3

chakintosh2• 7 months ago

r/DataHoarder is already on it

embedding-shape6• 7 months ago

Yup, reddit subreddit sure seems like a good place for "anti-american" discussions.

Where are the independent and non-VC fueled discussion forums when you need them?

blast• 7 months ago

It will be a second dose of Streisand if they do.

mistersquid• 7 months ago

Senator Corey Booker’s YouTube channel posted the archived video about 9am EST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiehEMlNiCI

KumaBear• 7 months ago

Senator booker is a grifter who supports his corporate donors over what’s right for the people.

pavel_lishin• 7 months ago

There are other links here as well: https://www.404media.co/archivists-posted-the-60-minutes-cec...

tastyface5• 7 months ago

404media is shadowbanned from HN for nebulous reasons. The mods should really revisit this policy: they've been doing some great reporting recently.

pyvpx• 7 months ago

Has there been any mention of reasoning behind it?

NaOH2• 7 months ago

There's nothing nebulous; there's no workaround for 404media's articles.

Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 - Sept 2015 (160 comments)

defrost• 7 months ago

A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote (404media.co)

  289 points by grahamlee 5 days ago | flag | past | 171 comments

so some slip through.

But: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=404media.co sure has a lot of [dead]

drweevil• 7 months ago

My own experience is that they've been solid throughout. Certainly better than many other options, at a time when the technical press has been generally disappointing.

esseph• 7 months ago

Because they've literally been creating stories about A16Z.

I've posted about some and they just get instaflagged or hidden.

slg• 7 months ago

I'm reminded of the Letter on Justice and Open Debate[1] that Bari Weiss signed only a few years ago, now she's spiking stories like this one on CECOT for showing the current administration in a negative light.

I also wonder if this story will get the type of leeway to stay on HN to collect the 200+ upvotes and 300+ comments of that previous example or if it will be flagged off the front page within minutes like so many other similar stories.

EDIT: No idea how long this post actually lasted, but checking in an hour later to see this has been flagged completely off the first 10 pages of HN despite getting close to that 200 point total.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283

cdrnsf2• 7 months ago

She was hired following the acquisition of Paramount to do things exactly like this. She's not a journalist.

dralley• 7 months ago

Literally not a journalist. She went from the opinion pages to writing opinion on substack. And for "some reason" was put in charge of a news organization.

empath752• 7 months ago

Everyone who signed that letter was either a dupe or a fraud.

timcobb• 7 months ago

You gotta give us more than that

UncleMeat12• 7 months ago

Weiss got her start screaming about how various college professors should be fired. There has never once been a moment in her career where she seriously cared about open debate.

drewbeck• 7 months ago

Or journalistic principles.

spankibalt• 7 months ago

Indeed. Weiss came up as conservative troll and engagement farmer, and was hired as such by Ellison.

martythemaniak• 7 months ago

You can't understand technology without understanding the people behind it. I always wonder about all these non-bot people who support her: is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick? Is there something else? I never quite get it.

A once-reasonable friend of mine genuinely thinks RJK is just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer. Crazy

mananaysiempre• 7 months ago

just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer

As much as it would be comforting for all dudes who’re trying their best to pretend otherwise, the two are not mutually exclusive. (No opinion on whether RFK Jr is in the intersection—I’m not in the US and couldn’t affect his actions if I tried.)

joncrane• 7 months ago

is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick?

It's both. That's one of the things that's difficult to suss out and therefore have a plan to engage. There's plausible deniability on both ends of that spectrum. Even in the high positions in the administration, there's a smattering of True Believers in amongst the grifters.

lostlogin2• 7 months ago

A similar post with comments linking to this thread just got marked as a duplicate, taking it off the front page.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361571

tastyface5• 7 months ago

As a companion piece, here is ProPublica's recent report trying to determine who exactly was sent to this torture camp: https://projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-immigrants-trump-...

estearum5• 7 months ago

Another good piece from right-leaning Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/blog/50-venezuelans-imprisoned-el-salva...

cdrnsf2• 7 months ago

Additional context:

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the men sent to El Salvador were overwhelmingly violent criminals; Pro Publica reported that the administration knew at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the United States, and six had been convicted of violent offenses.

https://www.404media.co/archivists-posted-the-60-minutes-cec...

LarsDu88• 7 months ago

How long before Hackernews takes this one down?

scratchyone3• 7 months ago

It's wiped from the front page already

oliwarner• 7 months ago

And it's back.

JeremyNT• 7 months ago

* * *

ProllyInfamous2• 7 months ago

<https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-60-minutes-cecot...>

This is disgraceful [0], whatever your opinion on illegal immigration.

[0] deporting non-citizens to 3rd-party countries/prisons

throw0101c2• 7 months ago

[0] deporting non-citizens to 3rd-party countries/prisons

See perhaps United States Declaration of Independence:

"For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:"

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...

saagarjha• 7 months ago

Ah, but you see, they're not us. They're them.

dzdt• 7 months ago

In this case there wasn't even any trial, here or abroad. Just sent to the torture gulag with zero process whatsoever. So its even worse than that.

justin663• 7 months ago

Even calling it "deportation" is far too charitable towards what they've done. Deportation involves sending them back to their home countries or, if that's unsafe, to another country. These people were rendered to a prison where they're meant to spend the rest of their lives, without any of the due process even a foreigner who had committed a crime would normally be accorded in the United States under our constitution.

estearum5• 7 months ago

Great point and I'll add, by "would normally be accorded" you of course mean "is legally entitled to by our nation's foundational document."

ndsipa_pomu2• 7 months ago

Just to clarify - a prison without due process is more accurately called a "concentration camp".

"Prison" is for people convicted of crimes.

PlanksVariable2• 7 months ago

These people were rendered to a prison where they're meant to spend the rest of their lives

These men were never intended to spend the rest of their lives at CECOT, nor did they. All were released in July 2025 to their home country of Venezuela, and they were in El Salvador for a total of 125 days.

PlanksVariable2• 7 months ago

That seems like the least disgraceful part of the whole thing.

Wherever they go, the U.S. taxpayers are stuck footing the bill for their prison stay, food, medical treatment, etc., but why would it need to be in the United States? They have no claim to stay there.

The disgraceful part is sending illegal immigrants without criminal history to maximum-security prisons, sending asylum seekers to prison, or sending anybody to prisons that torture the inmates.

empath752• 7 months ago

People in the US now have to use VPN’s to get access to domestic news from a foreign country. I think it’s fair to say that the wheels have come off democracy and things are badly broken.

_vqpz3• 7 months ago

There was a PBS doc about it too, CBS is just comprised

immibis2• 7 months ago

PBS funding has been cancelled.

JKCalhoun3• 7 months ago

Frontline: https://youtu.be/Lku5h9xjrqc

wwweston• 7 months ago

Things are bad, but the worst part isn’t hidden/missing principled reporting, it’s that a significant number of people don’t care to attend to it where it exists, domestically or internationally. And a majority of US voters cast their ballot for this outcome, so in a sense it’s democracy working as intended, however horrifying any problems or outcomes.

Alive-in-20255• 7 months ago

Plurality of voters, narrowly, but still it's enough.

How many just vote Republican without thought as they have always done, how many are in the fox news cult? So many people just thought they didn't want a female president or Trump would lower inflation. It's hard for me to accept that Trump represents America, but he represents enough of it.

drstewart• 7 months ago

It's fair to say that, but first please verify your age to access these sites if you're located in the UK

jimmydoe• 7 months ago

first step to beat china, be china.

jmward01• 7 months ago

This is why we need archive.org.

embedding-shape6• 7 months ago

Just wish it was distributed instead of such a US-centric organization. For survival, I hope they're thinking about how to make it more decentralized, because eventually the arm of the law is gonna come after them (again), and probably with less mercy this time.

Still a proud supporter of archive.org for many, many years. Their work is invaluable and I hope it stays around forever.

ChrisArchitect• 7 months ago

Archive links are all good in the comments, but let's make the submission url one of the story links with context:

CBS defends pulling 60 Minutes segment about Trump deportations

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrnv3keeneo

‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump...

g-b-r2• 7 months ago

The story is exactly that you can watch it on archive.org, most people already heard that it was pulled

Scoundreller2• 7 months ago

Funny how it leaked out by sending it off to their Canadian distributor

idiotsecant2• 7 months ago

Just another data point in the 'fascists are incompetent' trend. It's pretty lucky that one bug in the human firmware is moderated by another.

morkalork• 7 months ago

Sadly, that's the kind of mistake that only happens once.

JKCalhoun3• 7 months ago

What, me worry? Plenty more creative mistakes still to be made…

Scoundreller2• 7 months ago

They’re going to increase intern pay? Surely you’re joking.

ndsipa_pomu2• 7 months ago

Maybe not - ordinary people have been known to sabotage fascist regimes by making "mistakes". There's also the issue that incompetent people may be promoted well beyond their abilities due to them being "loyal".

dripdry452• 7 months ago

Funny how this is timed with the Susie Wiles “I’m an insider trying to do good” nonsense in vanity fair. That coont has been instrumental in so much bad stuff since Reagan…

Looks to me like it’s all damage control/pressure valve release stuff designed to distract from any real change. Because SURELY we will get some real change finally, right?? /s

g-b-r2• 7 months ago

Something I hadn't heard yet about CECOT: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/single-post/mass-grave-compl...

dust4brekky• 7 months ago

It's worth noting that the founders of the Lemkin Institute have, between them, held multiple leadership roles in reputable academic departments devoted to the study of genocide, and have also both been on the ground during or shortly after genocides or other crimes against humanity as part of international teams tasked with figuring out what happened and how to hold perpetrators accountable. These are not some lightweight bloggers.

The US government, in particular Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio, are, by the logic of the legal power they themselves invoked, war criminals who rightly belong in the Hague.

bgbntty2• 7 months ago

I found this quite interesting, but I don't understand how the articles claims we can see flesh.

And the author's Substack has 2 videos of Trump kissing and patting Bill Clinton's groin area (through pants). They are likely AI because I couldn't find anything online about how they're real besides the original photo. And if they were real, why is no one talking about it? He claims for one of the videos that it's real. So it kind of reduced the author's trustworthiness a bit.

JKCalhoun3• 7 months ago

Using the torrent, you should be able to pull it down in a few minutes.

why-o-why4• 7 months ago

Too bad the only people that will watch this are people who already understand the terror of what is happening. It might have helped a little if it had aired. My MAGA dad still watches 60 Minutes (no idea why, habit?) This might have penetrated his TDS-addled skull if it had aired. But the takeover of CBS by Trump and Ellison (and his 1980's-college-villain son) with Weiss is complete, and vile.

suzdude• 7 months ago

Maybe suggest he watch? Maybe he's interested in what CBS's leadership refused to tell him.

Streisand Effect and all.

why-o-why4• 7 months ago

I debated asking, but I talk to him only a few times a year and we both work really hard to avoid politics. I realize it is my responsibility if I want to see change, but I just lack the skills.

kristopolous4• 7 months ago

In any media, people only see what they want. There's a psychological term for this, Motivated Reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

If you want to break this you have to know the person and ask key questions afterwards. Their distortion field is held together by beliefs and principles, not empirical analysis.

For instance, for my father, the question "how is this treating people responsibly? How can we expect the behavior of those guards to be held accountable?" would pierce this ... but really you have to know how the person doing motivated reasoning thinks.

why-o-why4• 7 months ago

So does this apply to every single person all the time?

mlrtime4• 7 months ago

His Dad will be smart enough to know these questions are trying to set him up. Maybe try having a real conversation and not trying to change his mind. After all, there is a good chance you will be that Dad in the future (no matter how hard you tell yourself you won't be). Tell me how I now.

lostlogin2• 7 months ago

I wasn’t aware that CBS’s Ellison is Oracle Ellison’s son.

TIL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellison

nutjob2• 7 months ago

The oligarchy is in full effect. This is exactly how it works, ie you scratch my back I scratch yours. Ellison kills this CBS report, he gets approval on buying WBS, or more to the point NetFlix doesn't. Same with Musk, Middle East dictators and all the others lining up for favors from Trump. Also he and his family is enriched in various ways by all the pardons he hands out.

It's nauseating, but this is where Republicans live these days. The midterms can't come soon enough.

ordinaryradical• 7 months ago

Corruption is not merely something someone in power enacts in their choices; it is a rot that eats out the society from the inside.

As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.

More and more of the society enters the grip of this force and weakens until the truly valuable things—its resources, minds, institutions—are annihilated, stolen, and displaced by a hierarchy of criminals or warlords. This is how nations sink. It’s the story of many in Africa, South America, Russia—and now it is our own.

anal_reactor2• 7 months ago

As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.

When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian. Now that this is no longer the case, the mindset of appeasing the leader is suddenly a problem.

The whole situation was preventable, but everyone was too high on ZIRP to notice. We could've used the good times to establish good cultural values, but we didn't. Freedom of speech and other foundations of democracy were already rotting long ago but nobody cared. We could've used the good times to allow better dialogue between different political fractions, but we didn't. At some point democrats honestly believed they would simply never lose power again, making it seem pointless to talk to republicans. Now that the money dried out, people suddenly start asking questions and talking about "muh big values".

I have zero empathy.

benterix• 7 months ago

When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian.

It is a bit analogous to many of us worrying about Google and others getting so much power. The arguments were quickly dismissed with: "But these folks are responsible, don't be paranoid". The problem with this kind of thinking is, once the power balance changes, you find yourself in a situation you'd never put yourself now. You cannot make Google unlearn what they know about you. You cannot unsend the photos you privately shared on Messenger and force Meta to untrain their facial recognition models. Now all these things you considered a convenience given to you for free can be used against you, and the extend and direction of the abuse is correlated with who is in power.

hshdhdhj44442• 7 months ago

I’m curious which specific problematic values do you think were being adhered to and preached in the past, that was comparable to what’s happening in CECOT, and wasn’t opposed?

throwway262515• 7 months ago

Expanded and unbleakified:

Corruption is not just the immoral acts of an elite few; it is a parasite that hollows out society from within.

When the mainstream realizes that sycophancy toward the autocrat is rewarded, some willingly sacrifice their principles for short-term benefits, burrowing into the system like worms in an apple.

Yet, parasites cannot survive without a compliant host. To kill the infestation, we must cut off the food source: our passiveness. This begins with everyday refusals—denying the petty bribe, rejecting the convenient lie, and defending the honest colleague. By maintaining high ethical standards in our own spheres of influence, we starve the corrupt hierarchy of the dead matter it needs to grow.

We must also make the terrain uninhabitable for them. These organisms thrive in the dark, protected by silence. Therefore, we must actively expose them: documenting abuses, funding media samaritans, and organizing locally to demand transparency. When integrity becomes the standard again, the host becomes hostile to the parasite, isolating the invaders rather than letting them multiply.

Without this resistance however, the society weakens until its greatest assets—its resources, minds, and institutions—are cannibalized by a regime of criminals. This is how nations collapse. We have seen this story in Africa, South America, and Russia. This plague is now upon us. But history is not destiny. We possess the power to stop it. We only need the will to use it.

hshdhdhj44442• 7 months ago

Well said.

America isn’t used to corruption. It hasn’t seen societal level rot that corruption can bring since at least WW2.

It’s a deeply damaging phenomenon.

lifestyleguru• 7 months ago

As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.
displaced by a hierarchy of criminals or warlords

The problem is that initially it all looks straightforward and easy. Revealing even, because finally solution is not that complicated anymore. Only afterwards things turn unpredictable and violent, but then it's already irreversible.

r7213• 7 months ago

Here is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her ‘60 Minutes’ colleagues in full:

https://x.com/grynbaum/status/2002943084322287815

r7213• 7 months ago

Some more details:

https://x.com/grynbaum/status/2003109023705387478

https://x.com/grynbaum/status/2003209942057255073

xenophonf• 7 months ago

For those of us without Twitter accounts:

https://xcancel.com/grynbaum/status/2002943084322287815

https://xcancel.com/grynbaum/status/2003109023705387478

https://xcancel.com/grynbaum/status/2003209942057255073

mrjay422• 7 months ago

Why all those articles on HN are "flagged"? And by WHOM?

I've been watching this 60min piece, and there's nothing wrong with is. It's journalism well done.

Do Trumpist minions have their ways on HN?

krapp• 7 months ago

It only takes a few flags to be effective and there are definitely more than a few Trumpists on HN so theoretically yes. Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.

Like it or not Hacker News has never been (and will never be) a platform for free and open debate. It's designed around aggressive curation for quality over quantity and that makes it very easy to brigade by design.

UncleMeat12• 7 months ago

Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.

It could, but that'd be odd. We've seen oodles of structurally similar posts hang out on the front page unflagged before. There are even past examples of major posts criticizing the journalistic integrity of 60 Minutes. Only once the material becomes critical of the regime does it become flagged.

thomassmith65• 7 months ago

I upvoted the story itself, but the endless comments discussing flags on HN are a bigger nuisance than the occasional community-flagged story.

I am tempted to go over each such complaint on this page (there must be a couple dozen so far) and reply "Quiet, please! People are reading."

UltraSane6• 7 months ago

Marc Andreessen is a strong supporter of Trump.

skeeter20203• 7 months ago

Lets be more accurate: none of the powerful & rich are strong supporters OF trump; they support him strongLY because of the direct pay-offs they personally gain. I think it's important to differentiate between the Andreessens and your core MAGA supporter who I actually believe he is a god, because strategies for defeating them are very different.

smileson2• 7 months ago

Shut up or they will send you there ( by mistake for a year or two )

idiotsecant2• 7 months ago

There is a strong ideological lean on HN towards not necessarily the trump ethos, but more toward the technofeudalist ideal, which is currently broadly aligned with trump on many issues. It's also trumpisim in a more sophisticated hat, but it's adherents don't seem to think so.

estearum5• 7 months ago

It's even more craven and intellectually bankrupt than Trumpism, which at least has the simple honesty of "say good thing make good thing happen" and is broadly believed by people too stupid to know better.

_vqpz3• 7 months ago

Everyone here tries way too hard to emulate the Musks of the world as if their political beliefs were the reason those guys initially got so rich and successful.

prh8• 7 months ago

and unsurprisingly, this is getting downvoted, despite being extremely accurate

mrguyorama2• 7 months ago

Don't forget the very right wing fake "free speech" insistence, where speech you agree with is free and speech that criticizes your failures is "An attack".

Or the huge cohort who insist that Joe Rogan talking to another guy about how it's not that big a deal that the very existence of gay people is yet again under attack is "Two people having a calm debate of their difference in beliefs" despite that not being true.

There are tons of people on HN that would have done better to spend more time in English class learning about persuasive writing and the pillars of rhetoric and media literacy and all that "critical thinking" they claim school didn't teach them and are currently angry when people rightly call out their poorly supported arguments, and they don't actually seem to know what an "argument" even is.

It's so frustrating their faux "debate" beliefs. It's worse than a decade ago when they thought "debate" was screaming at your ideological opponents a hundred outright false claims that can't be countered in a reasonable time frame.

Nevermind that we HAD calm debate about most of this shit decades ago. But these people only believe a "debate" happened when their beliefs are validated. Otherwise it's "canceling" that thing they still scream about despite doing it all the time.

Also the idea that we should have "calm debate" about the government sending you to another country's prison without trial is insane when that was specifically one of the exact reasons the founding fathers decided to start shooting people over. Thomas Jefferson would not be calm in his rhetoric.

skeeter20203• 7 months ago

> I've been watching this 60min piece, and there's nothing wrong with is

It's not even that good of a story IMO; leading to full-on Streisand effect when it's easier than ever to find things on the interwebs, and double-impossible to suppress them. About all this has done is prevented the 60 minutes demo from viewing a story they would have immediately forgotten, and prompted a far more dangerous to the status quo & resourceful segment to go find & view a show they never watch.

spopejoy• 7 months ago

It's almost assuredly paid actors, the kind who brigade every single comment section no matter how piddly the outlet anytime there's a peep of pro-Palestinian, pro-abortion or whatever the culture-war generals are focusing their troops on.

Tbh HN does a _lot_ better dealing with this than pretty much anywhere. Yes HN has the flagging feature so of course it will get abused but as evidenced by this article sitting now at the top of HN, it gets addressed by moderator intervention, regularly.

evan_4• 7 months ago

Why do you think "paid"? These people are acting on their honestly-held ideological beliefs. Don't give them the out.

vkou2• 7 months ago

It's not paid actors.

It's partisan hacks who are somewhere on the spectrum between full support of this barbarity, and finding all the other shit that's being done useful enough to them to be worth compromising their values.

The latter can be identified by 'Well I don't agree with everything this administration does, but I will throw my full support behind <one of the many wedges they are using to turn this country into a corrupt single-party autocracy>.'

(They won't push you onto the tracks because they hate you, they'll push you because it means they'll see a 0.7% drop in their expected tax rate. They are in most ways, worse than the former, because they can tell the difference between right and wrong, and still carry water for the latter, because they see personal benefit in it.)

UltraSane6• 7 months ago

This should NOT be flagged.

vdupras• 7 months ago

This, and Larry Ellison buying all news outlets in America. Things should be happening quickly enough so that it's obvious where this is all going, right?

Whoever writes the next "Inglorious Basterds" should have a lot of fun parodying Larry...

tl• 7 months ago

I recommend everyone bookmark the archive.org link or download via the magnet link since HN is disappearing these.

Also, any recommendations for a news site that doesn't suppress news? Asking for a friend.

r7213• 7 months ago

It looks like mods manually removed flags for this one (it was flagged).

iLoveOncall• 7 months ago

It's still already low on the front-page, when usually posts with that amount of upvotes would stay at the top for multiple days in a row.

472828472• 7 months ago

With enough karma users can vouch for flagged posts to unflag.

bmacho• 7 months ago

Also, any recommendations for a news site that does suppress news? Asking for a friend.

HN?

chakintosh2• 7 months ago

Lemmy.zip

root_axis• 7 months ago

Also, any recommendations for a news site that doesn't suppress news

No such thing.

rubyfan• 7 months ago

The timing of this might lead one to believe Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery is a consideration in their editorial decisions. They and their competitor (Netflix) need regulatory approval for such a merger and the administration has already inserted itself into the deal.

pavlov• 7 months ago

It goes deeper. The Ellisons want to replace Murdoch as the state media for Republican administrations.

smt88• 7 months ago

I'm sympathetic to this idea but Larry Ellison will likely be dead in under 10 years and David Ellison has only ever been a Democrat.

It seems more plausible that David Ellison will bend in whatever direction the wind is blowing.

xoa• 7 months ago

Hard to imagine that's the a core part of it, and pretty naturally in America the clear ongoing and unprecedented (in modern times anyway) corruption on that front is the focus. But it probably doesn't hurt that she appears to just be a really big fan of that particular dictator and torture prison specifically. Earlier this year her site "the Free Press" was all over them [0]:

"The hottest campaign stop is this Salvadoran supermax: House Republican Riley Moore went to the super maximum security prison in El Salvador to take some photos in front of the inmates. “I just toured the CECOT prison in El Salvador,” he writes, with pictures of him giving a thumbs-up, shirtless inmates standing at attention behind him. Moore gave a double thumbs-up in front of the men, densely packed in their cold metal bunk. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took the same tour recently, posting a fun video in front of caged, tatted men."
"After Bukele left the White House, he thirstily tweeted, “I miss you already, President T.” Trump returned the favor, learning to say MAGA in Spanish: “¡America grande, otra vez!”"

Etc. And she's been very positive on Bukele personally as well. Might be multiple reasons she'd gleefully want to spike such a story even if the commands of her owners take precedent.

Edit: whew, this one sure triggered the technofeudalists and Baristans! From 3 to -3 for her own publication's and her statements.

----

0: https://archive.md/dcPkJ

huhkerrf• 7 months ago

I'm not sure how you can read that and think it is speaking favorably about the prison.

Here are some parts you left out:

The El Salvador supermax prison is becoming the new Ohio Diner. It’s the new Iowa State Fair. It’s the new Jeffrey Epstein jet: It’s where every political leader needs to visit, the place to see and be seen if you’re ambitious and in politics today.
They agreed that there was nothing to be done about the mistakenly deported Maryland man, now in Salvadoran custody. Two leaders of two great countries simply cannot find that one random wrongly deported man, and everyone should move along (I’m assuming that means he’s dead, right?).

kardianos• 7 months ago

Bari Weiss had editorial comments that forced a delay. If you want to read her comments, look for them:

https://x.com/thesimonetti/status/2003142908854313225

They seem reasonable. The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories in the past, which make her concern more relevant.

runako• 7 months ago

The arguments are nonsense. A summary is Weiss wants to make a case for the administration, which already has the largest platform in the world. If the administration wants to make a case for itself, it has (and has had) ample time to do so. As it stands, there is already a lengthy paper trail of arguments the administration has made in court. These arguments should take precedence over throwaway statements an admin rep might make to a news program.

Briefly, on a couple of them:

- "We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?" In the US, those people are known as "innocent," whether or not Weiss likes that fact.

- Holding a story until the administration is willing to go on record is exactly the same as giving the administration a veto over a story. We would not have adversarial journalism under these circumstances.

- "The admin has argued in court that detainees are due "judicial review" —and we should explain this" These men were sent for indefinite detention to a concentration camp outside the US borders, and then the administration argued in court that it could not affect any change in their status. This argument from Weiss is transparently false.

skeeter20203• 7 months ago

Reasonable? They ALL boil down to "we need to get official comments, rationale and explanations from the administration". They refused to comment on the story, so you wait because if they CHOOSE not to participate you don't get to publish? That's never been how reporting works. Her comments about a lack of detail regarding the criminal records & charges? The administration is the party that refuses to share this! They are not even forthcoming with WHO EXACTLY has been deported.

Bari Weiss bending over backwards to accomodate an administration that has never shown any sort of honesty or humanity is exactly why she was rewarded so handsomely. "They seem reasonable" is not even remotely close, when comparing "evidence-based truth" reporting with the president's "I speak the truth".

afavour2• 7 months ago

They aren’t reasonable.

If you wait for the administration to comment on a story before you publish it you’re effectively giving them the right to veto it. You ask, give them a deadline. If they don’t respond or say no comment (as they did in this case) then you publish.

The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories in the past

You’re going to need to elaborate on that. If it were true why wouldn’t Weiss just fire them?

pjc50• 7 months ago

The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories

[citation needed]

bakies4• 7 months ago

There's something about Ron desantis COVID shots at Publix. I didn't look into it but saw it on the right winger sites. You'll have to look into it yourself

umanwizard• 7 months ago

Bari Weiss is not a stupid person. She knows she can’t just openly say “I killed this because it’s critical to Trump”; she has to come up with some plausible fig leaf, which is what you’re posting here.

sans_souse• 7 months ago

Direct Download link if anyone needs it is https://archive.org/download/insidececot/60minutesCECOTsegme...

paulvnickerson2• 7 months ago

Here's why Bari Weiss delayed the story:

Hi all,

I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice.

Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered.

- At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.

- The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.

- Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?

- We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time.

My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.

I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you.

Yours,

Bari

estearum5• 7 months ago

TLDR:

Bari thinks the government should be able to quash any story it wants by simply refusing to "present the administration's argument."

stvltvs2• 7 months ago

Exactly. You give people a reasonable chance to comment, but you can't let them veto your story if they decline. That would be a naive way to be fair and balanced.

afavour2• 7 months ago

Here are the excuses Bari Weiss gave to bury the story.

The reporters reached out to the govt for comment. They chose not to respond. If you insist on holding off publishing until you have a comment you’ve just given the government the ability to block the story by endlessly delaying comment.

More broadly the problem here is simply that Weiss has no legitimate authority to make calls like this. She’s never worked as a reporter. The 60 Minutes staff have decades of reporting experience. The only reason she has the job is because a billionaire who is trying to curry favor with the administration installed her there. That context hangs over every decision she makes.

embedding-shape6• 7 months ago

The reporters reached out to the govt for comment. They chose not to respond.

According to the video itself (just finished watching it), that's not true. US officials did respond, telling them to ask El Salvador officials instead, so basically redirecting, rather than "no response". If that's worse or not I guess is left as an exercise to the reader.

evan_4• 7 months ago

The whole thing is poorly-conceived and obviously false but I just have to call this out-

Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this.

The story isn't that people found guilty of crimes went to jail, the story is that half weren't even charged with crimes! That's the whole point of the story! We should not be aiming for a balanced diet of criminals and not-criminals in our government-sponsored foreign death camps!

The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say.

We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?

What about charged? What does charged with a crime have to do with anything? Why bring that up at all? Do we send people to prison because they were charged with a crime? Is Bari Weiss a newborn baby who has never heard about the presumption of innocence?

I feel sick.

deepsquirrelnet• 7 months ago

It’s not just that, it’s that the administration knew they weren’t guilty of any crimes and sent them to be tortured anyway.

If you can stomach it, propublica has been covering stories like this since the summer [1].

Meanwhile, the MS13 has been cutting sweetheart deals with Bukele [2] and we have been releasing actual gang members for the privilege of sending innocent people to the torture facilities [3, 4], even in the face of reports of USAID being diverted to the gang for a money-for-votes scheme for Bukele [5].

[1]https://www.propublica.org/article/venezuelan-men-cecot-inte...

[2]https://www.propublica.org/article/ambassador-ronald-johnson...

[3]https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/ran...

[4]https://www.npr.org/2025/10/21/nx-s1-5580555/why-the-state-d...

[5]https://www.propublica.org/article/bukele-trump-el-salvador-...

p_j_w• 7 months ago

Her own excuse is either a complete lie or betrays the fact that she doesn’t understand the story. I invite her apologists here to choose which interpretation they prefer.

mindslight• 7 months ago

It's worth highlighting that continually driving focus onto a few spectacular examples of criminal histories is exactly how this regime has been justifying its actions.

qingcharles4• 7 months ago

We do unfortunately send people to long times in jail (sometimes over a decade) before their cases come to trial in the USA. And jails in the USA generally have vastly worse conditions than prisons (as they are "short term" facilities).

CECOT is a whole different beast altogether, though :(

UncleMeat12• 7 months ago

Even the people who were convicted of crimes don't deserve this. There's this sick belief in parts of society that criminals (which becomes a permanent state of being) are valid targets for unlimited suffering.

People should not be sent to torture camps where they have no hope of every leaving for the rest of their lives for committing crimes.

jama2115• 7 months ago

Well said, absolutely ridiculous framing keeps happening and you kept it grounded.

jimt12342• 7 months ago

The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say.

I think you don't understand MAGA mentality. Honestly, that's probably a good thing, but understanding MAGA would help understanding this whole situation.

kenjackson2• 7 months ago

This is an embarrassing response.

You don’t hold a story because you want to push the government harder to respond, especially when you have the executive’s official spokesperson giving a reason on the record already.

And what does she mean that we should spend a beat explaining that half do have criminal histories? She wants them to give a cookie for that? And why is being charged relevant? You don’t send someone to prison for life for being charged.

Lastly she misstates the administrations legal justification for deportation. She doesn’t appear to be an unbiased actor here.

The fact she sent that out publicly is a good indication of how prejudiced she will be with editorial content.

You had a good run 60 Minutes.

FireBeyond• 7 months ago

And why is being charged relevant? You don’t send someone to prison for life for being charged.

Yup. I was charged with a felony of which I was materially innocent.

But this is the right's spin on things, the "well even if you weren't found guilty, there was enough of an issue to arrest you and charge you".

I was watching a Zoom meeting of one of our local Superior Court hearings - was a motion to revoke or modify bail conditions.

The Judge actually rebuked the prosecutor, who had tried to explain why the motion should go their way. "Blah blah, in addition, the defendant has shown no signs of remorse or regret for the situation..."

Judge: "I'm going to stop you there. The defendant pled not guilty and at this moment no verdict has been determined. In the eyes of the law and this court, they have zero obligation or requirement to show remorse or regret for their alleged actions."

fumeux_fume• 7 months ago

Bari wisely points out that if the deportees are being tortured, then there must be a secretly good reason why if they dig a little deeper. Suggests asking Stephen Miller.

unethical_ban• 7 months ago

Thanks for posting.

For those not familiar: there were five screenings in the prior week that journalists attended to discuss it. She was aware of those and did not attend.

When she did look at it, her feedback was minor, and they made adjustments.

Then she killed it a day after her delayed feedback, on the weekend it was to air.

That context, combined with the response above, is telling.

She is at absolute best, entirely unfit and amateur for this role combined with dangerous arrogance.

More likely, she is the malevolent puppet of a billionaire ally of the current corrupt administration.

qingcharles4• 7 months ago

Having watched the documentary yesterday, the questions Bari raises are suitable for a follow-up. There is nothing wrong with the piece as it stands.

saubeidl• 7 months ago

See also: Gleichschaltung.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung

UniverseHacker• 7 months ago

This seems dishonest, she couldn’t possibly think the administration is going to share more useful information here, and if they did it would have no value. These people were illegally sent to life in prison at a brutal torture camp with no charges or trial, at the expense of US taxpayers. There is no possible excuse or rationale that would make it anything but extremely illegal and unethical, and a betrayal of all of the values our country purports to stand for. It doesn’t matter what crimes someone is accused of or not.

sgnelson• 7 months ago

A CYA letter full of illogical rationalization.

opello• 7 months ago

The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?

The analysis shows another way in which the government is trying to be secretive about how it's treating people that were within its borders and subject to its laws and protections. I can only hope someone pointed this out because the question suggests a baffling level of ignorance despite the message overall sounding like some reasonable feedback on the story, despite coming far too late in the process to be considered reasonable.

wildzzz• 7 months ago

Basically saying that because the administration isn't cooperating with judicial reviews or even bothering to comment (let alone display a difference in opinions), the story should be shelved. So as long as the government is united in its desire to commit horrible acts and stall justice, I guess we shouldn't bother reporting them? Not sure where the logic is there. And I guess since it's possible some bad apples exist, then we should just take the word of the government that everyone there is a gang member? I wouldn't ever call 60 Minutes cutting edge journalism, it's quality for sure but they are never the first on the scene. Who cares if other media companies have covered CECOT? 60 Minutes got first hand interviews with detainees that have good backgrounds. That's important, it lets viewers empathize with "good" immigrants just trying to create a better life for their families. This letter is weak.

embedding-shape6• 7 months ago

Basically saying that because the administration isn't cooperating with judicial reviews or even bothering to comment (let alone display a difference in opinions), the story should be shelved.

Which is ironic, considering the actual video that Canadian broadcasters manage to send, it ends with basically "We requested a comment from US officials, but they referred us to speak with El Salvador instead", so even the finish video that got broadcast, acknowledges this basic fact that you need to carry on even if both sides don't want to be interviewed on camera.

jimt12342• 7 months ago

Honestly, the argument that CBS buried the piece to protect Trump is difficult to accept because, well, watching brown people being treated like shit or even tortured is MAGA porn. Innocence or guilt is meaningless - Dear Leader said they're all enemies!

All the MAGAs I know on Facebook are posting about how the video is great ("It's about time someone does something!"), so I would think Trump would want the piece to air.

ajross2• 7 months ago

That explanation is days late, though. It's attested that she didn't even take a call from the episode producer before killing it. I mean, sure, if you put a bunch of people in a room and ask them to retcon a reasonable-sounding explanation for why you did something embarassing, you can do it! The world is a complicated place.

It's abundantly clear why she spiked it. I know it. You know it. We all know it. She was brought in as a clearly partisan voice to put exactly this finger on exactly these levers at CBS. We all saw it when she was hired and we all warned about this. And she did.

I mean, why bother stenographising the excuse? No one is fooled. "Partisan hack does partisan hackery" is like the least surprising line in this story.

munksbeer• 7 months ago

I mean, why bother stenographising the excuse? No one is fooled.

Plausible deniability, so that people on one side have something they can use.

(Obviously we believe it isn't plausible, but that doesn't matter in these sort of things)

reubenswartz• 7 months ago

Here's why Bari Weiss delayed the story:

That is not accurate. It's her excuse for spiking the story.

SilverElfin2• 7 months ago

This isn’t the real “why”. Holding the release back is a political decision. Why hold the story specially? Why not just issue any corrections later? It’s already gone through the same approval process other stories would. The choice to do something different here and treat Trump-damaging stories differently is by definition, biased.

To me, Bari’s response is a manufactured cover up. I’ve followed Bari for years and seen the progression from someone who was a balanced moderate to someone who is slowly developing a strong bias and letting the mask off a little bit at a time. The recent Turning Point townhall was the first big revelation of her bias to the public. But as someone who subscribed to her for years, I’ve seen the progression over time. And the language in here feels less like her usual journalism and more like something carefully put together to deflect.

As for the actual reason - here is what was shared by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Stelter

https://x.com/brianstelter/status/2002943384499925159

UltraSane6• 7 months ago

Bari Weiss is a liar doing Trump's bidding

pwthornton• 7 months ago

Fascinating how this got leaked. A TV station in Canada accidentally ran the original episode version, implying that this was pulled super late and the episode was completely in the can.

stvltvs2• 7 months ago

Was it an accident?

dripdry452• 7 months ago

Narrator: It wasn’t

embedding-shape6• 7 months ago

Probably as accidental as the people doing the censorship of the latest Epstein files released today that had "accidents" about how they censured stuff.

Alive-in-20255• 7 months ago

It was completely finished. There's an article out today that says the main reporter on the story complained that the censor Bari Weiss had not bothered to appear at the previous five earlier screenings and reviews by the editorial team.

1over137• 7 months ago

That was Global News, you can read about it here:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/cbs-news-says-global-mi...

If by 'ran the original episode' you mean on TV: no, they didn't, but they did put it on their 'app'.

Considering how much Trump is screwing with Canada, maybe it was someone's small act of revenge.

czottmann• 7 months ago

Here's the magnet URL to the torrent, can't hurt:

    magnet:?xt=urn:btih:734abc77f48d11c78543c52004b6f57db71d6d92&dn=60minutes-cecotsegment&xl=1483256352&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&ws=http://ia601703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=http://ia801703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=https://archive.org/download/

anonym29• 7 months ago

I believe information wants to be free, and should be free, even when I don't unanimously agree with the information, so I will start by re-sharing the torrent magnet link for the video, which I am also seeding right now, and will continue to do so until at least a full month passes with zero activity:

  magnet:?xt=urn:btih:734abc77f48d11c78543c52004b6f57db71d6d92&dn=60minutes-cecotsegment&xl=1483256352&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&ws=http://ia601703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=http://ia801703.us.archive.org/32/items/&ws=https://archive.org/download/

That said, there seems to be lots of conspiracy-adjacent talk in here. Has anyone considered the impact of the previous Trump lawsuit against CBS over the Kamala Harris edits, or the Trump-BBC lawsuit, whereby CBS made a business risk decision to avoid a story that might have some individual aspects of questionable factual accuracy that could come back to bite CBS in a courtroom, like how BBC's selective edits of Trump came back to bite them? Paramount/CBS settled Trump's lawsuit over the Kamala Harris "60 Minutes" edit for $16 million in July. BBC is getting sued for $10 billion. It's not economically irrational for an organization that has already settled lawsuits for selective presentation of political information in the past to be more worried about $10b lawsuits than $16m lawsuits.

Alive-in-20255• 7 months ago

Resisting these economic threats, these lawsuits, is something that major media needs to do, otherwise they just get compromised step by step by the wealthy oligarchs.

bakies4• 7 months ago

If they were worried about business then Bari's email would have read differently

Not to mention that these lawsuits are completely frivolous and it just a way to bribe the president

kenjackson2• 7 months ago

Ironically, this might end up being more widely watched now (Streisand). I’ve seen multiple people on my Facebook link to different sources hosting the video. People who never would’ve heard about the story are now watching it through the lens of Trump and CBS trying to kill the story.

cmxch• 7 months ago

But who will believe it? Or just mass report it off the platform?

burkaman• 7 months ago

I doubt it, around ten million people watch 60 minutes live every week. Maybe that many will hear about the cancellation, but I don't think most will then seek out the full segment online, even if it's easy to find.

saguntum• 7 months ago

Yeah, even those looking for the full segment will have trouble finding it if they are not tech savvy and highly motivated.

A relative in their 60s saw headlines about the cancellation and wasn’t able to find it until I sent them the archive.org link. They are relatively well informed and competent with technology but never go around digging for hard to find media.

I think people on HN tend to overestimate how closely people follow news and how hard they are willing to work to seek out alternative sources of information. I’m with some extended family over the holidays. They might have seen this segment had it aired - I believe it was airing after some football game - but now there’s no chance of that happening. I don’t judge them for it at all, but most of their news consumption is passive through TV or social media. I think a lot of people follow news that way. Life’s busy.

It kind of makes me understand a little better how the censorship regime in other countries is so effective despite it being so easy to hop on a VPN. Raising the barrier to entry even a little reduces the audience from 10,000,000 to a fraction of that, even with the censorship itself being public knowledge.

_moof• 7 months ago

I didn't even know 60 Minutes is still on the air, but you better believe I watched the shit out of this segment.

_3u102• 7 months ago

It’s saved so over 15,000 lives and protected the human rights of millions of Salvadorans. Truly a great accomplishment.

I’m excited to see what positive coverage CBS has of this great development in human rights in El Salvador.

manuelmoreale• 7 months ago

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

_3u102• 7 months ago

Agreed. 15,000 el Salvadorans have not been subjected to arbitrary execution. A triumph of the rule of law.

bakies4• 7 months ago

What's saved that? The torture camp? You know bukele _is associated with_ MS13

squibonpig• 7 months ago

I don't know enough about El Salvador's politics to know whether the mass imprisoning brought down the gang murders and improved stuff on the street, but why, once you've got people trapped and unable to do harm, can't you go back through them using officials you audit for gang influence or whatever and have individual trials? Instead, they did a farcical hundred-person-at-a-time show trial for the people they imprisoned, so who knows what portion were guilty. What it makes clear to me is that there's no interest here in identifying the innocent or guilty, but plenty of interest in keeping the undistinguished mix caged up like dogs in a kennel for the rest of their lives. What excuses do you make for that?

gmd635• 7 months ago

Larry Ellison is using his bags to purchase lies and silence.

No economy can be in true equilibrium when the consumers send profits to be spent in unforeseen and unrelated ways like this. Every purchase carries potentially immense future costs that are almost completely opaque.

Free market maximalists need to confront this fact before praying at the altar of complete deregulation, and every consumer should pay more attention to who they are buying from.

jaredklewis2• 7 months ago

Sorry what regulation in particular are you thinking about here? There’s no logical anti-trust angle I can think of.

I mean of course I think the outcome here is bad, but I’m struggling to think of a kind of regulation that could have prevented it that isn’t completely insane.

Edit: Listen everyone, it sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. Adding more regulations is not going to suddenly make the FTC act right; we have thousands of regulations already on the books and if they wanted to do something, they could.

tantalor3• 7 months ago

In July 2025, the Ellisons bought CBS (Paramount) through Skydance. This was approved by Trump's FTC.

The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. They aren't doing their job.

maxerickson• 7 months ago

The whole point of granting limited liability is that it enables things that benefit society.

So if something doesn't benefit society, don't extend that grant to it.

ajross2• 7 months ago

Your prior seems to be that the Trump administration is operating in good faith and that they would naturally be predisposed to allow the merger, being free market republicans and all.

That's not the accusation at hand. The contention is that the Trump administration is threatening to block the merger (corruptly, in opposition to their republican proclivities) unless the news arm of the merged company is operated in a partisan way.

And the evidence for that is that Ellison walked in, threw out CBS News's pre-existing leadership, and brought in a reasonably-well-known-but-still-not-celebrity-enough-to-be-independent partisan republican voice to run it. And now that she's there, she's clearly operating the news room in a partisan way.

Seems like a pretty convincing theory to me.

UltraSane6• 7 months ago

No one should have a net worth greater than $1 billion

api3• 7 months ago

What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds?

There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.

The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else.

Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas.

I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.)

Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.

the_gastropod9• 7 months ago

I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.

steveBK1232• 7 months ago

The tariffs are at least partially about crony capitalism if you look how they have repeatedly played out. Announce big, broad, sweeping industry & country level tariffs. Talk to Big Tech execs, quietly delay/rescind specific sub-components or even companies from said tariffs. Rinse & repeat.

The companies left fully paying tariffs are the ones that aren't big enough to have the orange mans ear / "donate" to the ballroom construction.

ambicapter• 7 months ago

There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.

Yeah, that's what OP said. I hate these sort of comments where the poster acts like they vehemently disagree with what was said, but then just restate what was said in a slightly different way.

SilverElfin2• 7 months ago

The recent defense bill is evidence of this. Who has access to these contracts and massive spending increases? Is it any random startup that is building a good product? Nope. It’s the incumbent companies that are big donors and the various defense tech companies from the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale ecosystem, who are ideologically aligned to the administration and support them vocally. Same with the new ICE and border agency funding. They’re tripling these agencies budgets. Who’s getting contracts to hire thousands of new agents or to build software profiling the millions they want to deport in 2026? Their friends like Palantir probably.

gmd635• 7 months ago

In a free and unregulated market, you will see cronyism by the wealthiest players who have captured it. The payoff of capture is enormous and therefore investors have incentive to offer up capital to accelerate the capture. Tyrants emerge from anarchy. A corrupt MAGA administration bought by private money is the product of a poorly regulated market.

dredmorbius2• 7 months ago

"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes said, is power."

-- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776

More significantly, one of the first discussions within the text of precisely what wealth is (on which Smith has several, and occasionally inconsistent, answers, and which he seems to think of as more a flow than a stock.)

One of Smith's principle complaints in his text was what we now call "market failures" and "regulatory capture".

<https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...>

<https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/>

lbrito3• 7 months ago

Thanks for sharing. The way things are here, this will soon be censored - sorry, I meant flagged - here as well.

dang6• 7 months ago

Attentive readers will note how often the "this will be censored" comments appear in threads that spend many hours on HN's frontpage.

lbrito3• 7 months ago

I get the irony, but its a bit meaningless since we can't compare the quantity of these (yet) uncensored posts with those that have been taken down, and thus aren't visible.

More importantly, other commentors here have already admitted to flagging this entry. The way flagging exists now rewards one-sideism and partisan behaviour - all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters. A counter-flag option would balance things.

pjdesno• 7 months ago

Bryan Cantrill, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728

The specific lines about Ellison and a lawnmower start at 38:28 in the linked video; the entire Oracle rant starts at about 34:00.

nielsbot2• 7 months ago

We shouldn’t anthropomorphize any billionaires. They’re not even people at that point, just destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time.

We need confiscatory taxation for a better future.

smashah• 7 months ago

The Ellison Cabal represent the primary enemies of freedom all over this earth. It's imperative to defeat them.

jama2115• 7 months ago

Whilst true, it’s important to focus on the worst ones first, as with everything there is a scale.

paulvnickerson2• 7 months ago

Don't tell that to Paul Graham.

belter• 7 months ago

Every time I see this video, I feel a strange tenderness for the new generations watching it.

They do not really understand how bad Oracle used to be. This is us, old combat veterans, sitting by the fire, describing unspeakable battles to the youth...knowing full well that they think we are exaggerating. :-)

And the most disturbing part is the realization that the Frankenstein monster itself, Larry Ellison, is still out there. Still roaming free. Still very much alive... An eternal, terrifying, lawnmower wielding zombie of enterprise software and government corrupting rent extraction.

postflopclarity• 7 months ago

everybody involved is evil.

bparsons• 7 months ago

No matter what your politics are, this is a pretty dark turn for the United States.

ozozozd• 7 months ago

I’d bet $40 that no conservative will agree with that, and $60 that very few conservatives will agree with that.

engineer_222• 7 months ago

I expected a piece titled "Inside CECOT" to have a part where the principal journalist actually goes there.

bakies4• 7 months ago

Don't think she could

engineer_222• 7 months ago

Why not? Many journalists have already been there.

EDIT: See, ABC's Matt Rivers was /inside/. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol0dcwHCb8Q

frugalmail• 7 months ago

Anybody watch Nick Shirley's tour and interviews at CECOT? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrK9nVLAqwk

I thought he did a great job.

I'd love to hear what others that have seen both think since I'll want to put aside some time to watch this one after all the holiday hustle and bustle are done.

I think it's a great model based on what Nick's tour showed.

rldjbpin• 7 months ago

stepping outside the (geo)politics, externalizing deportation to a third country has been attempted in the past as well [1], which ultimately did not succeed. this was also partly due to the ridiculous cost per deportee.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275396

Inside CECOT – 60 Minutes [video]

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