Kate McKinnon’s Ex-Situationship to Run CBS News?
COULD BE! Her name is Bari Weiss, and while you may not have heard of her in the past, her name is about to be everywhere. So who is she?
V Spehar – Sep 05, 2025 – Under the desk News
My cmnt: I would say that this is a fairly fair take on Bari Weiss. She certainly knows how to play ball with multiple sides of the political spectrum. I guess only time will tell – now that she has landed the CBS news top spot – which way she leans the most.
Everyday the internet serves me some new little piece of lore that I didn’t ask for, and probably didn’t need to know. Todays was that famed lesbian and iconic comedian Kate McKinnon had an on again off again situationship with the journalist Bari Weiss when they were students at Columbia University.

Much like her love life, Bari’s path has never been straight and certainly not narrow. She’s self identified as “a liberal who is critical of the excesses of the left” or “a liberal unconvinced by left wing culture” a sort of “left-wing centrist”. Others have described her as an “unhinged zionist” and rape apologist.
She speaks often about being “anti-cancel culture” and in 2018 during an appearance on MSNBC said Brett Kavanaugh had a reputation as a “prince of a man” before the allegations from Christine Blasey Ford. She “believe[d] what [Ford was] saying,” but noted that it was “one word against another” and asked if an alleged crime as a teenager should be “disqualifying”.
OK BUT ON THE OTHER HAND – She’s been in a public feud with Tucker Carlson over his revisionist history when it comes to who the bad guys of WW2 were, and his white supremacist “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric. She has been critical of Trump all along saying “Trump’s Make America Great Again movement as only interested in “power” rather then principles”. During the election she frequently spoke about how Trump would be a bad president for Jewish people. She said Donald Trump “is rending apart the fabric of our civilization, gleefully and willingly. He is turning Americans one against the other, ratcheting up the divisions between us and trafficking in conspiracy theory”

Ope – hold on.. well.. wait sorry.. then she seems to have changed her mind during an appearance on a right wing cable news show where she talked about the steps she’s taken to “overcome anti-trump syndrome”.

Bari Weiss is (maybe intentionally) hard to peg. Constantly moving her own goalposts and rarely remaining consistent on her values and political positions, save for, being unapologetically and enthusiastically Pro-Israel and a bi-sexual. Matt Fleigenhammer for the The New York Times once said “Bari Weiss has long been blessed with two superpowers, those close to her say: She knows how to make useful enemies, and she knows how to make useful friends.”

One of her most useful friends, has been Peter Thiel. Thiel, who notoriously does NOT really do interviews has appeared on her podcast twice, most recently to take a victory lap after winning the 2024 Presidential election and getting his protege JD Vance into the Vice Presidents seat.
But that’s not her only billionaire buddy either. Again per the NYTimes – Backers of Ms. Weiss’s company have included the MAGA venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks chief executive; Allen & Company, the investment firm that hosts the Sun Valley Conference; and Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of Activision Blizzard. She’s also one of Substacks biggest creators with over 750k subscribers paying $8 a month or $80 a year for access to her hot takes and provocative journalism. She’s not wanting for much. Girl PRINTS.
And yet… rumors are – Bari’s being tapped for a senior leadership position in the news division at CBS. Yes, lol, the CBS that just paid Trump 16 million dollars to settle a frivolous lawsuit Trumps lawyers cooked up accusing the outlet of impropriety due to the way they edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Apparently, they’ve got up to 200 MILLION DOLLARS on the line hoping to strike a deal that would roll Bari’s media empire up into the new CBS/Paramount/Skydance situation and then they’d give her a job guiding the editorial direction of CBS News.

What kind of choices will she make as top brass at one of the nations longest running and most serious newsrooms? Probably more of what she’s doing now. Because to the right wing billionaires buying up news & media outlets – she provides huge ROI. People subscribe, they support, they take the pieces of her they like and throw away the rest. She’s a master at creating a permission structure to be critical of the left while maintaining plausible deniability from being called a right wing op. She keeps one foot in the parts of left wing culture that benefit her – mostly the gay parts – one foot in the MAGAsphere – where helicopters of cash rain down upon anyone willing to “just ask questions” or “play devils advocate” – while skipping hand in hand with Peter Thiel and the rest of the Carl Yarvin pilled technocracy.
We don’t know if she got the job yet – but I know a PR fluff campaign when I see one.. and this talk of Bari Weiss taking over part of CBS News has been far from a soft launch.. it’s more like a red flag.
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