Eye on Disdain: The 14 Worst Moments From CBS’s Inauguration Day Coverage

Curtis Houck
January 21st, 2025 2:57 PM

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While it lacked the schoolings NBC’s liberal journalists faced at the hands of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and longtime GOP hand Hogan Gidley or ABC’s degree of Biden apple polishing, CBS held its own during Monday’s Trump inauguration thanks to the pomposity and obsession with January 6 on the part of many of their lead anchors.

NewsBusters slogged through the first nine hours of their coverage — from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern — to find the worst meltdowns, objections, and expressions of disgust with Trump returning to the presidency.

Below are 14 moments, presented below in chronological order.

1. Dismissing DOGE Over ‘Unelected’ Musk Telling Congress What to Do

Oh, the irony. The CBS crew joined ABC and NBC in casting doubt on entire point of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and whining that a man who “wasn’t elected” and has “no political experience” would dare come into government and tell Congress their pet projects and government workforces inside their districts need to be trimmed.

 

 

 

Joining in this poo-pooing were, unsurprisingly, pompous incoming CBS Evening News co-anchors Margaret Brennan and John Dickerson, CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King, and chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett (click “expand”):

ROBERT COSTA: [DOGE is] going to face some challenges from the appropriators on Capitol Hill. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Congressman Tom Cole, these traditionally are the people who decide how the federal government spends money, not some outside, informal group run by a billionaire. And that’s already the real tension I’m detecting in my reporting. It’s not about Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. It’s about congress and Elon Musk.

(....)

DICKERSON: And the reason this matters is because in the way the American government was formed, you were supposed to have input, political input, from a President but also from Congress to balance out representation across the country. There was a time, it’s amazing to think of it, FDR had to go to Congress to ask for changes in the executive branch. He couldn’t do it himself, and when he made a very small, tiny little request, there were 330,000 telegrams sent to the Capitol. They picketed Washington, saying his tiny little request for aides was a power grab from Congress. Now, nobody bats an eye when the President says, I’m going to hire somebody to cut out $2 trillion worth of the executive branch.

KING: Someone with no political experience too. I mean, he’s clearly a successful businessman. We get that.

DICKERSON: And wasn’t elected by anybody.

KING: Yeah.

DICKERSON: It’s just a shift in where the power and representation lies in a system that was supposed to have an equal representation of power.

BRENNAN: Or — or it’s a test, as many of these things are, and John, I think you recognize this too, that some of it is sloganeering. Some of these are campaign promises. They sound good, but then they’re going to hit the wall of what is politically possible, not just within — how the bureaucracy but within how our government is set up. It’s testing Congress right from the get-go on so many fronts, how much they’re going to demand the separation of powers.

(....)

GARRETT: [O]n this Department of Government Efficiency, based on my reporting and conversations working with those as — as those try to put that in place, they’re going have much more success, they believe, working on the timing for federal permits, the timing of federal actions, and regulations as opposed to shrinking the federal workforce. Couple of quick statistics on the federal workforce. Two million employees. That’s 0.6 of one percent of the entire U.S. population. That’s been the ratio for about two decades, so the federal workforce has not exploded in size in the last two decades. Also, about 71 percent of the federal workforce, in one way or another, works in national security. Norah, the largest federal agency by population, 21 percent, is Veterans Affairs.So, when you dig into the federal workforce, you find that most of it deals with national security or national security-type work, something Republicans are not going to want to reduce in large numbers. Also, 80 percent of the federal workforce doesn’t work here in Washington, D.C. It’s distributed all over the country. Senator Blunt knows this very well and the three states with the largest federal workforce outside the DMV — District of Columbia, largely? California, Florida, and Texas. So, this Department of Government Efficiency, as it really leans into this, is looking much more to cutting regulations, speeding up federal approvals, and not dramatically trying to reduce the size of the federal workforce, because doing so not only brings pushback from Congress, but also begins to take things away that Republicans and the citizens of the country at large value, like national security and things that are related.

NORAH O’DONNELL: It’s an excellent point, Major. Thank you so much for pointing that out about the size and scope of the federal workforce and in what states where they are centered.

2. The Real Message of Inauguration: A ‘Ceremonial Recasting of January 6’

Just minutes before the inaugural ceremonies began, he declared the proceedings to actually be a “recasting for the nation of what the meaning of January 6, 2021, actually was” and it shouldn’t be lost on people that Trump was “returning as president to the very place where those who supported him rioted on Capitol Hill to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and overturn a legal and fairly held presidential election.”

 

 

“What we’re seeing here is a complete recontextualization of what January 6 means. Those who have long supported President Trump believe it was just a momentary spasm, a reflection of anger that grew out of Covid-19 and lockdowns. Many others, President Biden in particular, in his inaugural address, four years ago, said it was a symptom of something dark and dangerous in America. White supremacy, extremists, terrorists within the United States,” he added.

3. Gayle Upset About the Racial Makeup of Trump’s Inauguration

King, of course, had to remark about the audience: “I have to say, I’m looking at this crowd, and I do not see many people of color. Is — is anybody else besides me observed that? I’m fascinated by why that is.”

 

 

4. Dickerson Contrasts George Washington Leaving Office to....Trump on January 6?

Yes, the subhead was as stupid as you’d expect.

5. Panel Excuses Biden Pardoning His Family Minutes Before Trump Takes Oath

CBS interjected minutes prior to the swearing in of President Trump and Vice President JD Vance to inform viewers that outgoing President Biden pardoned five more members of his family (in addition to son Hunter).

Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes spun it as Biden simply “want[ing] to head...off” any possible investigations by a Trump administration and Dickerson chalking it up to “politics” “ringed around this ceremony” and Biden “acting” to save them.

Leave to the actual Democratic donor in King to admit “the timing and the optics, I think, don’t help here.”

6. Dickerson SEETHES at Trump ‘Not Feel[ing] Obliged to Extend...Grace,’ Broke Oath on J6

After Brennan and outgoing CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell weighed in on President Trump’s address (with the latter bemoaning the “list of grievances”), Dickerson expressed disgust at Trump treating the inauguration like a State of the Union and deciding he wouldn’t reciprocate the day’s aurora of “special grace.”

 

 

“[B]ut as is often the case, he did not feel obliged to extend the same grace or ceremony. He talked at some length about the horrible betrayal about the President who is sitting right over his — his shoulder. The question is, as we have seen before, does he enjoy the — the benefits of the office but not the obligations,” he added.

Dickerson relitigated January 6, remarking Trump took the same oath that he was “ been accused by the leaders of his party in the House, the Senate and his own Vice President of actively working to overthrow an election and therefore break with that oath.”

7. King Gets Confused Amid Rant About Trump Using Speech to Criticize, Not ‘Unite’

King was so worked up about how much she loathed Trump’s speech that she got her schedule out of whack:

8. Brinkley UNLOADS Over Trump’s ‘Tropes of American Exceptionalism,’ Far-Left Activism in Decline

Like ABC did with Mark Updegrove and NBC with Jon Meacham (and tried to with Michael Beschloss), CBS had liberal presidential historian Douglas Brinkley opine throughout the day. 

Brinkley was in rare form kicking up a storm over the speech as filled with “all the tropes of American exceptionalism thrown into the hopper, pushing the concept of Manifest Destiny” that made for “MAGA” equaling “American exceptionalism on steroids.”

 

 

He was also crestfallen over the state of liberal activism while also demanding Trump be more “unifying” than he believes he was:

But look how he changed to society of the days of the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, climate activism, you know, it’s just gone and there is a void that President Biden left that no Democrat right now is able to fill. Nancy Pelosi not being there. Michelle Obama, AOC not there. You’re feeling there’s a little bit of a void. But speech was, I think, better than his first in the sense that the tone of it hung together well and it — it — it is just, though, not really a unifying speech but it masqueraded as one.

9. O’Donnell Cheers Clintons For ‘Show[ing]...Graciousness’ in...Shaking Hands?

O’Donnell doled out this partisan, out-of-left-field proclamation as the First and Second Families, former Presidents, and other major dignitaries filed out of the ceremony:

I just want to note that Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton are shaking every member of the Trump’s family despite the things that they have said about her. And I think it was, I am told by people close to the Clintons, it was very important for them to not only show up but to show the sort of graciousness that normally accompanies former presidents and to make sure that they publicly support this peaceful transition of power.

10. O’Keefe Offers VERY Simplistic Description of Pardoned Biden Family Members

O’Keefe weighed in just after 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Joe Biden’s pardoning of five additional family members by making them all seem rather benign and asserting claims of nefarious behavior were completely without merit:

All three have been active in the now former President’s political career. James Biden was his fundraiser in his first campaign. His sister Valerie famously was the campaign manager and then, of course, helped raise Hunter and Beau Biden after their mother died. Frank Biden, who served in the Clinton administration, all have worked in lobbying or influence peddling in the last several decades and there had been talk, of course, over the course of this most recent campaign that the Biden family or, as Trump and his associates called it, the Biden crime family, should face consequences for their alleged actions, none of which in any real way has ever panned out. He, of course, also preemptively pardon his son Hunter.

Someone should have him read Bulldog Winner Miranda Devine’s book The Laptop From Hell or Congressman Jim Comer’s (R-KY) new book, All the President’s Money.

11. Garrett Takes Issue with Trump’s ‘Hostility’ Toward Bidens, Not Biden’s Last-Minute Pardons

Here was how Garrett explained away and downplayed the Biden pardons, predictably making a bigger issue of what Trump would do regarding those charged in the January 6, 2021 riot:

But this transition is one done through gritted teeth with pardons issued by President Biden just before his presidency ended. He effectively told the country I believe my family would be criminally prosecuted unfairly by the next President of the United States and with his remarks just now, President Trump said he still believes those who have either pled guilty to crimes from January 6 or were convicted by jurors are American political hostages. That is a kind of hostility one administration to another that is befitting this moment in our history but is unlike any other in our history.

12. Get Over It: Brinkley Sad Far-Left Activists Lost Power, Remembers Late Planned Parenthood Leader

Our Tim Graham posted this on Monday afternoon after this aired live, insisting “women” are “in a bad place right now” as a country even if “some women in the conservative movement...are rising” because their party (the Democrats) no longer control Washington.

Along with noting the passing hours earlier for former Planned Parenthood head Cecilie Richard, Brinkley kvetched the feminists have lost power to create “a demoralization of women” despite the 2017 Women’s March having been “the largest protest march in U.S. history.”

13. Panel MELTS DOWN Over Milley Painting Being Removed, Bash Hegseth’s Marriages

Showing their affinity for the Deep State, the CBS crew spent over six minutes freaking out over the removal of Milley’s painting form the Pentagon.

O’Donnell fretted this was “[h]ighly unusual for a man who served for years in the U.S. military” while Brennan — whose husband served in the Army and worked for Biden in the Senate — lamented Milley stood up to Trump in June 2020 because he believes in not “bringing the military into politics” and “obeying only lawful orders, making clear that the president is not the emperor or the king.”

Here was another sampling of the eye-rolling nonsense, which featured the implication Hegseth should have faced trial in the military for having been married three times (click “expand”):

O’DONNELL: I guess, pulling back for a moment, what kind of message do you think this sends within the Pentagon to other uniformed officers who serve the constitution, not the president of the United States by design?

BRENNAN: You know, Norah, this is something, and I know you have heard this as well from others particularly who serve in uniform or — or have served, how much character, how much judgment, how much rules are just instilled within you as a virtues when you take on that uniform because good order and discipline are part and parcel of having a well-functioning military, so it is really challenging some of those in uniform to see this idea of loyalty to anything other than the Constitution, of putting aside as well the military — the code of military justice. That’s one of the things that came up in the hearing for Pete Hegseth, for example. It’s not just because someone is approved and they don’t like that you cheated on your last two wives. It’s — if you did that you would be prosecuted if you were in uniform. There are reasons some of those things are in there and that some of the Democrats in particular on that committee went at Pete Hegseth that way because they were trying to make that point, including the ranking member of that committee saying character in this way is something you are supposed to uphold your troops — your troops to including the laws of conduct. How can you elevate people who do not abide by them themselves?

O’DONNELL: And, Robert Costa, Mark Milley became the symbol for someone who stood up to Donald Trump as president. In many ways too, but just saying, look, you need to sign the orders. You can’t go shoot people in the knees as Mark Esper described in his book, the former Secretary of Defense, to quell domestic protest, that there are rules and regulations that he spoke back to the president for lack of a better word and Donald Trump did not like that and then has since been forced with a lot of threats, including Steve Bannon saying there should be a military tribunal, that he should be court-martialed.

14. Going Full But Who Will Pick the Cotton If Trump Deports Illegals

In the 3:00 p.m. Eastern hour, the network went to correspondent Nancy Chen at a farm in New Jersey to provide the implication that a mass deportation would not only cripple American farms, but put more of them out of business by rounding them all up.

Chen also said a mass deportation would result in more imported produce, “which could lead to concerns about environmental and labor productions..and that, in turn, Norah, could mean national security issues as well as the acceleration of the closure of more American farms.”

Thankfully, CBS correspondent Kelly O’Grady (formerly with Fox Business) provided a reality check that, while there’s that argument about mass deportations costing money and costing the economy, “the flip side” would be less people “drawing less on resources, so housing — right — there's food stamps, things that undocumented workers are drawing on right now” and it could lead to “more U.S. jobs” (with the suggestion that farm wages go up).

To see the relevant CBS transcript from January 20 (featuring more quotes such as Brinkley putting the Covid-19 pandemic and January 6 on equal footing as “two monstrous events that swept the land” and Brennan freaking out over Trump finding common cause with “the very far-right movements, anti-immigrant movements” within Europe), click here.

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