It’s happening, folks—the great media purge of 2025. One by one, the smug, self-righteous faces of the Trump-era “Resistance Journalism” are fading into irrelevance. Joy Reid? Gone. Jim Acosta? Done. Chris Wallace? Outta there. Chuck Todd? Buh-bye. Norah O’Donnell? Stepped down, though let’s be real, she didn’t exactly have a choice. And now, Lester Holt—the so-called “beating heart” of NBC News—is stepping away from the Nightly News anchor desk.
Now, according to NBC, Holt isn’t leaving entirely. He’s being reassigned to Dateline, a true-crime show that, let’s be honest, is barely on the radar of anyone outside the “wine moms and treadmill walkers” demographic. Sure, they’re calling it a “full-time role” at a “powerhouse” program, but let’s not kid ourselves—this is a demotion. You don’t go from anchoring the flagship news broadcast of a major network to narrating dramatic reenactments of suburban crime sagas because you’re at the top of your game.
NBC, of course, is trying to spin this like Holt is choosing to leave the most coveted seat in television journalism because he just really loves covering unsolved mysteries. The network’s Executive Vice President of Programming, Janelle Rodriguez, put out a glowing statement, calling Holt “the beating heart of this news organization.” Which naturally raises the question—if he’s so vital, why is he being quietly shuffled off to Dateline while NBC desperately tries to frame it as a victory lap?
BREAKING: Lester Holt, anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News’ for a decade, will leave the show this summer. He will move full time to ‘Dateline.’ https://t.co/RZRcO8D2vF
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 24, 2025
The answer is simple: the corporate media bet everything on nonstop Trump hysteria for eight years, and the house of cards is collapsing. When Trump left office in 2021, they lost their golden goose. CNN and MSNBC turned into glorified Biden PR machines, hoping their audience would stay hooked on the “Trump is bad” narrative forever. But then reality hit—Americans started tuning out. Turns out, when you stop actually covering the news and instead spend all your time hand-wringing about how democracy is dying, people get bored.
The Trump Effect
Joy Reid OUT
Chuck Todd – OUT
Jim Acosta – OUT
Lester Holt – OUT
Ayman Mohyeldin – OUT
Katie Phang – OUT
Jonathan Capehart – OUTKeep going
We’re witnessing the collapse of legacy media
— It’s Tiff (@TiffMoodNukes) February 24, 2025
So, when Trump stormed back into office in 2025, these networks tried to rekindle the magic, doubling down on their breathless doomsday coverage. But it didn’t work. The problem is Americans have moved on. They’ve lived through record inflation, disastrous foreign policy, and skyrocketing crime. They care about their grocery bills, not MSNBC’s latest “Trump coup” panic special. They’re not buying the hysteria anymore.
That’s why journalists who made their careers on anti-Trump fearmongering are suddenly looking for the exits. Acosta, who used to preen and grandstand in the White House press room like he was auditioning for an Oscar, couldn’t hack it once CNN shoved him into a low-rated afternoon slot. He quit and is now ranting into a podcast microphone from his basement like a guy with way too many opinions on Reddit. Wallace abandoned Fox News for CNN+, a streaming service that tanked so fast it made New Coke look like a hit. And now, Holt is bowing out of Nightly News before things get really bad.
The media spent years smugly lecturing Americans about “threats to democracy,” pushing half-baked narratives, suppressing stories that didn’t fit their agenda (Hunter Biden’s laptop, anyone?), and branding anyone who disagreed with them as extremists. And now, as their credibility nosedives, they’re slowly being shown the door—either “voluntarily” or otherwise.
This isn’t just a reshuffling. It’s a reckoning. And it’s long overdue.
