Dear readers, we regret to inform you that the new and by-no-means improved CBS Evening News is at it again. This time, turning an otherwise serviceable report on the disappearance of Washington’s birthday into a vessel with which to take a shot at President Donald Trump.
Here is that report in its entirety, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, February 17th, 2025 (click “expand” to view transcript):
MAURICE DUBOIS: Finally tonight, George Washington doesn't have much luck with birthdays.
JOHN DICKERSON: The father of our country was born on February 11th, 1731. But in 1752, the colonies switched to the Gregorian calendar and George’s birthday was moved to February 22nd.
DUBOIS: Washington went on to beat Britain, found the country and become its first president. Enough for Congress in 1885 to make February 22nd a national holiday.
DICKERSON: Which it was for decades until 1971, when Congress moved Washington's birthday to the third Monday in February- that gave us a nice long weekend. But do the math: it means Washington's birthday never falls on Washington's birthday, February 22nd.
DUBOIS: And the dissing didn’t end there. Washington's birthday soon morphed into Presidents Day. How did that happen?
DICKERSON: Well, during the Monday holiday debate in Congress, a member from Illinois, the land of Lincoln, tried to have Washington's birthday renamed Presidents Day to also honor Lincoln, born February 12th.
DUBOIS: That was rejected, but the idea was now out there. And in 1971, when that first Monday G.W. holiday fell on the 15th, much closer to Lincoln's birthday than Washington's, it added momentum to the Presidents Day movement.
DICKERSON: Texas quickly changed its state holiday to Presidents Day. And more than a third of the states have done so since then. They did not agree, however, on the apostrophe. Before the S, after the S, or no apostrophe at all.
DUBOIS: And that, perhaps, is because there is no agreement on whether they are honoring one president or more. Washington and Lincoln clearly deserving, but Filmore and Buchanan?
DICKERSON: Over the years, the holiday became little more than a ten-day celebration from the 12-22nd, not of any president but of car, furniture, and appliance sales.
DUBOIS: And while the U.S. code still calls a federal holiday, “Washington's birthday”, most calendars say Presidents Day. The original purpose of the holiday all but lost.
DICKERSON: When the Senate returns tomorrow, it will keep up the Washington's Birthday tradition of reading aloud his farewell address. In it, he warned of political parties dividing the country, unchecked power, and the spirit of revenge.
DUBOIS: Words that still echo nearly three centuries after Washington's birth, on whatever day it was.
DICKERSON: That’s the CBS Evening News on this Washington’s Birthday. I’m John Dickerson.
DUBOIS: I’m Maurice DuBois. Have a good night. We’ll see you tomorrow.
The prevailing custom for network evening newscasts in most cases is to close out with some variant of a feel-good story. You have the standard “fireman rescues kittens”, “kid’s lemonade stand sells out”, or some profile of a resilient athlete. On other occasions, you’ll have the profile of some recently-deceased artist or entertainer.
Former anchor Norah O’Donnell liked to profile female athletes when she ran the CBS Evening News, but often did some of the aforementioned fare. What you didn’t often see was the nightly expedition or history lesson that characterizes the current iteration of the Evening News.
This report started out well enough. I grew up observing Washington and Lincoln’s Birthdays in school, and always wondered why they got smushed together. The report was fine and would’ve been a certified banger but for how it ends:
DICKERSON: When the Senate returns tomorrow, it will keep up the Washington's Birthday tradition of reading aloud his farewell address. In it, he warned of political parties dividing the country, unchecked power, and the spirit of revenge.
Dickerson and his writing team may have thought this was subtle, but it wasn’t. The implicit hit on Trump embedded into the references to “unchecked power” and “the spirit of revenge” mar what was otherwise one of the better reports to air on Nouveau CBS Evening News.
Trump didn’t get a reprieve from Dickerson and DeBois, and neither did our eyes and ears. The biggest achievement of the new CBS Evening News may have been to trigger viewers into missing O’Donnell.
