The leaked “60 Minutes” segment from Sharyn Alfonsi was shown in Canada, streaming.
A couple of sites have picked it up.
This version is better quality: https://t.co/lQFQzacSal
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) December 23, 2025
For now here’s the link where you can find it.
More to come…
When is an ad campaign too much?
For “Marty Supreme,” it seems like more is just becoming more.
In a new ad for Cash App, star Timothee Chalamet is shouting from the top of what looks like a roof in Las Vegas. Slowly it’s revealed to be a field of brightly illuminated orange ping pong balls. As the camera pulls back, Chalamet is shown atop the Las Vegas Sphere — now lit up bright orange with the “Marty Supreme” logo.
Chalamet is shouting, fist thrust in the air, “Yeah!”
Can this kind of thing backfire? Possibly. “Marty Supreme” is not an action film. It’s a serious character study. There are funny parts, but it also teeters on the tragic. I can’t imagine director Josh Safdie envisioned his film being promoted this way.
But Chalamet and A24 have turned “Marty Supreme” into a kind of crazy carnival. Everything has been painted orange, merchandise is at a premium, and the exclamation “shwep!” was introduced by Chalamet in a video even though it’s not in the movie.
Once the first flush of fans passes through theaters, and word spreads that a crazy Marty in orange acting outrageously is not what the movie is about may cause disappointment. Already I’m seeing social media posts along that line.
It may be time to rein this all in.
Original ball for an original guy @RealChalamet. Marty Supreme x @CashApp on top of @spherevegas
Marty Supreme Cash App Card stamps are available now on Cash App.
Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. See terms and conditions at the link in bio pic.twitter.com/NkskSboHyq
— Marty Supreme (@martysupreme) December 22, 2025
Last night’s special about Rob and Michele Reiner was so well produced and moving, it’s a shame it had to air at all.
All the people interviewed were emotional and sincere. Albert Brooks certainly found it the hardest, but he soldiered on as Rob’s closest friend. Kathy Bates and Jerry O’Connell were in tears.
But the horrible reason for the special does not go away. And now I’m hearing more about Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party, the one to which Rob and Michele brought their troubled son, Nick. Hours later, as we know, he brutally killed them.
Sources say Nick’s behavior at the party was not just about going up to guests and asking if they were famous. That’s been reported. I’m told he was actually threatening to them. “He was looking to pick fights, physically,” the source reports.
Nick’s threats are what caused the reported fight between him and his father, and prompted them to leave as soon as the Reiners could get him out of there.
Now, says the source, many of the guests are fearing subpoenas from Nick’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, after the arraignment on January 7th. If there is a trial, which would seem doubtful, many of the stars who had run-ins with Nick, like “SNL” star Bill Hader, could possibly testify.
What a mess…
Barry Manilow — a concert machine — turns out to be human, after all!
He says doctors have found a spot on his lung, but caught it early. He’ll have surgery for lung cancer, and then take off the month of January to recover.
His medicine? “I Love Lucy” reruns.
I have no doubt Barry will be back to work ASAP. Don’t listen to the British tabloids. Post surgery he’ll be singing “Looks Like We Made It” everywhere!
Speedy recovery!
CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss has started the day with her house on fire.
Weiss gave a weak explanation this morning to CBS News staff for why she pulled Sharyn Alfonsi’s piece on the El Salvador prison last night — at the last minute.
The piece had been vetted, approved, screened in house five times, and promoted widely. At the moment CBS announced the axing, there were dozens of clips all over the internet promoting the segment. They hadn’t been published in just a few minutes, but days. They were pulled down in minutes, I can tell you that. I watched them in real time disappear.
CBS already had this year’s indignity of firing Stephen Colbert. Then the turmoil of the Ellisons fronting for Donald Trump and buying the network as part of their Paramount deal. Now this — more than incident — which has set social media ablaze with criticism. Weiss’s intention after marching orders is to remake the network as a Fox News Lite.
The Ellisons must not get their hands next on CNN by buying Warner Discovery. That much is now crystal clear.
Here is Weiss’s sad excuse for a rationale. Her main objection? That Alfonsi didn’t get someone like Stephen Miller, Trump’s Goebbels, on camera. Alfonsi says she tried to get comment, but no one answered. But she didn’t need anyone. Her reporting has always been 100% accurate. She has the story.
“The story presented very powerful testimony of abuse at CECOT, but that testimony has already been reported on by places like the [New York] Times.”
Weiss continued, “The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject, two months later, we simply need to do more. And this is ’60 Minutes.’ We need to be able to make every effort to get the principles on the record and on camera.”
“The only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect, and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues. Anything else is absolutely unacceptable.
“To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else, and that is my North Star, and I hope it’s the north star of every person in this newsroom.”
“60 Minutes” is in crisis now that Bari Weiss is running the News Department for the Ellisons, who are surrendering to Donald Trump.
Now the show’s correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, has written a note to her colleagues and friends to let them know why CBS at the last minute pulled her segment on CECOT, the El Salvador prison where Trump has been sending people to be tortured and killed.
There are few times in the almost 60 year history of “60 Minutes” when a segment was pulled to favor the government or business. But here we are. In the last few weeks we’ve seen the number of political reports that usually take the Trump government to task dwindle to a few.
Here is what Alfonsi wrote. I say this: we are in a desperate situation with the vindictive and fascistic Trump dictating what media can report. The Ellisons should be ashamed, but they’re not.
This will have enormous reverberations at CBS and other networks beginning now. The Ellisons and Weiss will do everything they can to dismantle CBS’s long, revered legacy.
Alfonsi’s note:
News Team,
Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.
I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.
Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.
We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.
If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a “kill switch” for any reporting they find inconvenient.
If the standard for airing a story becomes “the government must agree to be interviewed,” then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.
These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.
CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.
We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet.
I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.
Sharyn
MONDAY MORNING UPDATE CLICK HERE
UPDATE: Tonight’s show is just two instead of three segments. One of them was made longer at the last minute.
No political pieces on tonight’s show.
Tonight, “60 Minutes” was supposed to air a controversial subject covered thoroughly in print this week.
exclusive picture from pulled segment at top
deleted Teaser below
The story was about Trump and something called CECOT — aka Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, the El Salvadoran prison where he was sending Venezuelans.
But now the newly conservative network has pulled the plug, announcing there will be no segment even though it was promoted. CBS says it will air sometime in the future. But it’s very rare for a “60 Minutes” piece to get axed right before showtime. This reeks of new CBS News editor in chief, conservative website owner Bari Weiss, who’s been given control of the department.
Weiss has been widely criticized for her Town Hall with Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, who for an hour this past week promoted her husband’s book on air.
This is all bad news as Weiss has cleared out the “Evening News” to install a puppet in Tony Doukopil. She’s getting ready to oust the anchors from “CBS Mornings.” Her vision of CBS News is a Fox News lite after not being able to hire that network’s Bret Baier.
CBS has erased all links to the segment on all social media. But they left behind this description on Paramount Plus:
Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and nine months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with some of the now released deportees, who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured inside CECOT. Oriana Zill de Granados is the producer.
This is the now deleted teaser for the 60 Minutes report that was supposed to air tonight on the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador that Donald Trump sent hundreds of migrants to. CBS is officially a mouthpiece for the Trump administration thanks to Bari Weiss https://t.co/uRoFh2YdFo pic.twitter.com/aE1cbOXxAl
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) December 21, 2025
keep refreshing…
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) December 21, 2025
Nicki Minaj has gone to the dark side.
This is what happened to Darth Vader.
The rapper showed up onstage at Erika Kirk’s glittering Turning Point USA event today.
She fulfilled the promise of her recent social media posts backing conservative values.
Minaj suggested that JD Vance was Charlie Kirk’s assassin. You can hear her say it at 22:52 on the video below.
She says “You have. amazing. role models. like, are handsome dashing. President. Be assassin. JD Vance, our vice president.”
This might be problematic for Minaj, who’s for months been touting a new album set for March 2026. So this is an interesting play because she needs a hit. It’s not clear if this new publicly political statement will work for or against her.
Appearing at the Turning Point event with Erika Kirk is even more problematic. Since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Erika has been heavily criticized for her glam campaign, doing rallies with fireworks and other evangelical trappings.
Kirk also just endorsed Vice President JD Vance to be the next president of the United States. This seems odd before Donald Trump’s first year in office is over. Who asked her? But Erika once won a Trump beauty pageant, and wouldn’t have endorsed anyone if Trump — who carried on embarrassingly after Charlie died — hadn’t sanctioned it.
Jogo Toddynho dos Estados Unidos, Nick Minaj, marcou presença em um evento sem fins lucrativos para apoiar políticas conservadoras dos EUA, ao lado de Érika Kirk, viúva de Charlie Kirk.
— PRIDE POP (@PridePopBR) December 21, 2025
Nicki Minaj fait une apparition à l’America Fest de Turning Point USA aux côtés d’Erika Kirk.
pic.twitter.com/umcWXyYIMW https://t.co/SlIeuNroa3
— FRENCHRAPUS (secondaire) (@Media_FrenchRap) December 21, 2025
The weekend box office depended completely on “Avatar Fire and Ash,” and it didn’t disappoint.
James Cameron’s final deep blue dive into 3D took in $88 million from Thursday through today.
It’s not close to the opening, however, of its predecessor. “The Way of the Water” opening with $134 million, so “Fire and Ash” is probably going the actual way of the water.
But it doesn’t matter. It’s the end of a trilogy that has paid off handsomely. Disney-Fox won’t end up “under water” and that’s all that counts.
In limited release, “Marty Supreme” had a strong start for A24 and Timothee Chalamet.
A total in 6 theaters of $875K means the ball hit the paddle every time. But do notice, as with “Fire and Ash,” declines each day. Off 31% on Saturday and another 15% today.
(PS Did I miss this? Did Timmy play ping pong on any TV shows?)
A24 will have to make a big pitch to the dreaded adult crowd who didn’t buy the merchandise and doesn’t know about the rapper press or anything orange when they spread their wings this Thursday.
Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?” seems to be off. This is the kind of film Disney-20th can’t seem to do, like “Deliver Me From Nowhere.” “Thing” is from Searchlight, however, which usually knows how to release a quirky indie dramedy. With decent reviews, Cooper’s film could be doing better. But it’s also not an end of the year Oscar buzzer. This cried out, “Wait until March!”
Tonight’s “SNL”:
Cher, hotly anticipated, looked fantastic but lip sync’ed her first song tonight. It was the dreadful Christmas song she put out last year called “DJ: Play a Christmas Song.’ The lip sync’ing was very obvious and embarrassing.
And yet, she returned with a hot take on Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run.” The band was sizzling, and you could tell Cher was live and having fun.
Bowen Yang signed off after 8 seasons with a couple of poignant moments. His exit was planned, and announced last summer. This was not a surprise.
Still painfully thin, Ariana Grande proved to be a good sport of a host. She sang live, a lot, through many sketches. If her next album could have real music and no rap, hip hop, or yodeling, she’ll finally get her Grammy award.
James Austin Johnson’s parody of Trump’s psychotic speech this week was note perfect. Michael Che making Colin Jost tell jokes he hadn’t seen before was hilarious.
The Elf sketch was destroyed by the weird vocal thing. Couldn’t bear listening to it.
Trump delivers a holiday message from the White House pic.twitter.com/37WpSWYYDd
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) December 21, 2025
2025 Christmas Joke Swap! pic.twitter.com/L2GDtgVhGj
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) December 21, 2025