Anderson Cooper Walks Away from CBS and 60 Minutes

Summary

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Bulwark Takes – "Anderson Cooper Walks Away from CBS and 60 Minutes"

Date: February 18, 2026
Host: Tim Miller (B)
Guest: Jonathan V. Last (JVL) (C)

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Overview

In this dynamic episode, Tim Miller and Jonathan V. Last (JVL) dig deep into the turmoil at CBS News, exploring how business interests, regulatory fears, and political signals are reshaping network journalism. The conversation pivots around Anderson Cooper’s departure from CBS after 20 years, Bari Weiss’s controversial leadership, and the broader consequences of mega-corporate media deals—especially in an environment increasingly swayed by political pressure and acquisition ambitions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The CBS/James Talarico/Colbert Fiasco

• FCC Pressure & Media Self-Censorship

  • CBS lawyers preemptively canceled Stephen Colbert’s interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, citing potential—but not actual—enforcement of old FCC rules.
  • JVL: “Is it a shakedown if you want to be shook down? Because that's, that's what this is really about.” (02:31)
  • Tim: “We're going to pre surrender in advance. Yeah, yeah, we're going to surrender in advance to the administration on this rule. That's like crazy.” (04:29)

• Corporate Motivations Behind the Scenes

  • Tim and JVL argue the real driver is CBS owner David Ellison’s desire to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery and outmaneuver Netflix—leading CBS executives to signal alignment with the Trump administration.
  • JVL: “CBS is doing this because they want to do it… because it furthers the larger business goal of the guy who now owns CBS.” (03:59)

2. Corporate Games & Mergers in the Media

• Business vs. Journalism
  • Efforts to appease the Trump administration are, according to JVL, not about ratings or honest journalism, but to gain regulatory favor and clear the path for profitable mergers.
  • JVL: “Everything is incentives, right? It does not matter… what the ratings are… What matters to them is finishing their acquisitions and building their streaming service.” (09:13)
  • Comparison to Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post: Bezos isn’t concerned about the paper’s financial performance, but about using it to curry influence for government contracts benefiting his rocket company, Blue Origin.

3. Bari Weiss’s Tenure and Ratings Decline

• Bari Weiss at CBS

  • Weiss’s arrival as a network news chief is noted for driving a sharp ratings decline (around 20%) at CBS Evening News, while adopting a style that doesn’t meaningfully distinguish the network from competitors—other than awkwardly appeasing political power.
  • Tim: “All of the decisions that have been made… are going to materially harm already struggling businesses… There’s no even logic sense to what they're doing.” (08:09)

• Performance Doesn't Matter—Loyalty Does

  • JVL notes that the actual business performance is irrelevant compared to demonstrating reliability for future deals.
  • JVL: “Nobody cares about her business success. Right. That we were like, hey, well, she proved she's reliable and she can be trusted. And more people who need somebody like that who's reliable will be willing to give her their money.” (12:55)

4. Anderson Cooper Walks Away

• Departure’s Broader Context
  • Anderson Cooper leaves CBS and 60 Minutes after two decades, opting to focus on CNN, but the hosts speculate he might wind up under Weiss’s management anyway if Ellison’s deals close.
  • JVL: “It's entirely possible that he will be working for Bari Weiss again a year from now when she also runs CNN.” (07:16)
  • The loss of Cooper’s star power underscores the network’s declining draw, worsened by management turbulence.

5. The Peter Attia/Jeffrey Epstein Connection

• Controversial Personnel Choices
  • CBS quietly kept Peter Attia, a doctor embroiled in controversy due to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, as a contributor, despite internal opposition.
  • JVL: “She fought for him. All the other CBS suits were like, dude, we can't do this. This is. Look at this creep. And she was like, no, no, cancel culture.” (13:46)
  • JVL: “It's vice signaling as ideology and not just like social pose.” (14:09)

6. Media’s New Normal: Corruption and Pretense

• Business as Corruption

  • Both Tim and JVL stress that recent media appointments and decisions aren’t about innovation but are linked to “corruption” and “attack on democracy.”
  • Tim: “What they’re actually doing is corrupt and an attack on democracy.” (11:18)
  • JVL: “They pretend that it’s...to bring real fairness… and it's all bullshit.” (11:41)

• Comparisons to Fox and Old-School Transparency

  • The pair contrast the current CBS approach—insistent on its own neutrality—with Fox News’s open embrace of a point of view.
  • JVL: “At least Roger Ailes admitted that he was Roger Ailes… He's a piece of shit, but he never pretended to be anything else.” (16:18)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Tim Miller:

  • “We're going to surrender in advance to the administration on this rule.” (04:29)
  • “There's no even logic sense to what they're doing.” (08:09)
  • “What they're actually doing is corrupt and an attack on democracy.” (11:18)

• Jonathan V. Last:

  • “Is it a shakedown if you want to be shook down?” (02:31)
  • “CBS is doing this because they want to do it… furthers the larger business goal of the guy who now owns CBS.” (03:59)
  • “Nobody cares about her business success.” (12:55)
  • “At least Roger Ailes admitted that he was Roger Ailes… He never pretended to be anything else.” (16:18)

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Important Timestamps

• FCC/Colbert Cancellation & Motives – 01:00–05:54
• Corporate/Merger Games – 05:54–09:12
• Bari Weiss’s Ratings & Business Shift – 09:12–12:55
• Anderson Cooper Departs/Media’s Future – 06:40–08:09
• Peter Attia Controversy – 12:55–14:41
• Corruption vs. Real Journalism – 10:32–16:11
• Sign-Off and Banter – 16:22–17:18

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Podcast Tone

Conversational, sharp, a touch irreverent, but grounded in skepticism for corporate spin and political pretense. Both hosts are frank in calling out what they see as systemic corruption masked as business innovation or editorial independence.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode delivers a candid look at how big-money deals, corporate interests, and political power are converging to re-shape American journalism—often at its own expense. Anderson Cooper’s quiet exit is the symptom, not the cause, as familiar faces are shuffled around not to rescue ratings or journalistic quality, but to serve the ambitions of media moguls and political actors. In the end, Tim and JVL suggest, it’s not about who gets to tell the news, but who can use news organizations as currency for greater power.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Scenic route in Abercrombie's new spring collection, designed for weekend getaways full of layers like sweaters, dresses, and matching sets that take you from happy hour straight to a weekend upstate. The piece on everyone's radar is their new reversible trench coat. It's navy on one side and a coastal plaid on the other. The perfect spring staple. Get your closet ready for spring plans. Shop Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores. Hey everybody, Tim Miller from the Bull Work Happy Marty GR here with my colleague Jonathan V. Last I wanted to talk about the drama over at cbs. A bunch of stuff happening. I got into a little bit this crazy story where the lawyers at cbs I I guess told Stephen Colbert he couldn't interview James Talarico because of they're scared of the big bad FEC FCC bureaucrats. We talked about that a little bit with Rick Wilson. So I want to talk about that with jbl, but as well as some other some other notable progressions as CBS goes the way of the Washington Post, the CBS devolution continues. So let's just start first with that big news story, jbl. I mean, the whole thing is kind of crazy. It's like it's not as if the FCC made a new rule. They just kind of Brendan Carr had said they're thinking about enforcing this old rule that hadn't been enforced, you know, for certain shows. And the CBS lawyers were just like, well, well out of an abundance of caution, we're going to cancel this interview with James Talarico, popular Democratic Senate candidate.

[C]

Yeah, well, this is how it is. Right. In the same way that there is now a whole monitor at 60 minutes making sure that they, you know, gotta don't edit any interviews because of their plea deal that they struck. Not an actual plea deal. I understand that. It's a joke. Yeah. With, with Trump after the Kamala Harris interview, which he filed a lawsuit over. And this is all, it's all just shakedown stuff. And they. Cbs, here's the thing. Is it a shakedown if you want to be shook down? Because that's, that's what this is really about. Right. And so this is all in David Ellison's pursuit of getting to buy Warner Brothers Discovery because he wants a gigantic streaming platform. And in order to get that, he needs to create the most hostile environment possible for Netflix. And you create a hostage which is currently in the lead to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. In fact, they've agreed to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. But in order to do that, you have to continually signal to the Trump administration that you're on their side, which increases the pressure on Warner Brothers Discovery to walk away from the Netflix deal because they then are like, you see what I'm saying? This is all triple bank shot in which CBS is doing this because they want to do it.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Because it furthers the larger business goal of the guy who now owns cbs.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Which is insanity.

[B]

Well, it's not insanity if you, if you, when you just look at it in the way of. That is at least a logical strategy in a quasi authoritarian state.

[C]

Like otherwise, if you're in Hungary, it's, it makes sense.

[B]

Yeah, right. There's no other metric to look at this where this makes sense, where it's like, oh, we're going to pre. You know, what's the Tim Snyder line?

[C]

Pre surrender.

[B]

Yeah, we're going to pre surrender in advance. Yeah, yeah, we're going to surrender in advance to the administration on this rule. That's like crazy. I mean, this is not enforceable. There's no way there's going to be a presidential campaign that has 30 candidates. So you're, so you're going to make every late night show host, every candidate, or they can't talk about politics at all. And the whole thing is just stupid. It's, it has no bearing on 2026. So like, if, you know, the logic for this was the lawyers at CBS got a little over their skis. Like that would be the stupidest shit you've ever heard, right? If the thinking of this is that David Ellison and Barry Weiss or whoever else there was want to blunt Talarico, you know, because they're interested in helping either a less electable Democrat or Republican, that is stupid, because this is utterly backfired. Nobody would have noticed the tal. I mean, like, you know, some people have noticed it. It's not nothing to go on Stephen Colbert, but many more people will see it now. This is helping him way more. Right. So under each of the, those are the other two reasons why you might do this. Right. And both of those are what would be moronic. And so what you have laid out is the, is like a logical, crazy, but like logical series of events, which is that CBS has decided that they needed to keep doing performative shit to show the Trump administration that they are onside.

[C]

Correct, correct.

[B]

As part of the merger of getting Warner Brothers. Yeah. Right.

[C]

And again, because it works on both sides of the trade, here they are trying to signal to, to the Trump administration that they are on side and so the Trump administration can bless their deal. But this has the simultaneous effect of signaling to Warner Brothers discovery that it's dangerous to sell to somebody who isn't them.

[B]

Right, Right.

[C]

And it's, you know, we did, we just, we live in a world where you remember when we. Well, it's bad that Barack Obama is picking winners and losers in the solar industry. We have a command economy now in which everything is decided by one guy. And that's fine.

[B]

I mean, again, this is all in the context of the broader business proposition of wanting to get more assets because none of this is helping cbs. That takes us to the other story, which is Anderson Cooper after 20 years and 60 minutes saying that he's not going to renew his contract. Obviously, Anderson Cooper is a draw for 60 minutes. And if the point, at this point of network news, which has a failing business, business model, is trying to get people to tune in, Anderson Cooper had to help that on the margins compared to some of their less famous correspondence. And he's, he's hitting this. He's hitting the road.

[C]

Yeah. And this is after Barry Weiss tried to hire him to run the evening newscast. And so he wanted no part of that, I think correctly, as we've seen with the guy she hired Tony Ducafil to copel. And, and so Anderson's walking now. I feel a little bit bad for him because he's, he's going to focus on cnn. It's entirely possible that he will be working for Bari Weiss again a year from now when she also runs cnn. Because if. If the Ellisons are allowed to. To. If they succeed in buying Warner Brothers Discovery, I would be surprised if CNN wasn't also folded underneath her purview, because I think that's to Trump, which is that, don't worry, we will have reliable control. And so Barry's tenure at CBS News is proof of concept for that.

[B]

Okay, so again, that makes sense in the merger context. It doesn't make sense in the context of making CBS and maybe CNN successful businesses. And to me, that's just focused on. It's similar to lead to the Washington Post. Like all of the decisions that have been made, I think are going to materially harm already struggling businesses. And to me, there's no even logic sense to what they're doing. They're not trying to be network Fox, which might not work, but at least it'd be something. At least it would be an effort, and I would not support that. But doing just this thing where it still kind of has the flavor of the evening news from before. But there's lots of unnecessary caveats, you know, like at the end of a news segment, you know, there's some lip service paid to what the Trump administration would think about this. Who wants that? Like, you can just get the real news on a different network.

[C]

So the ratings are down.

[B]

Not for the MAGA people, Right?

[C]

So CBS Evening News is where Bari Weiss's influence has been most manifested. And it's the flagship show. She has rebuilt it. And the ratings are just down on that pretty substantially, I think about 20%. But here's the thing. Like, everything is incentives, right? It does not matter to the Ellisons at all what the ratings are on CBS Evening News and how much money CBS News loses as a division or makes as a division. What matters to them is finishing their acquisitions and building their streaming service. And that's the business. The same with the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos doesn't give a shit what the Washington Post loses or makes as a business. What he cares about is Blue Origin. So Blue Origin has to get a bunch of government contracts in order to succeed. And he wants to have his own rocket penis, just like Elon Musk. And so in order to get government contracts to make that succeed, the Washington Post has to lose 100 million bucks or something like that. And that's like the weird web in which we now exist, where all of these media properties are. Are only valuable as ways to signal to the strongman that other companies are deserving of favors in government business.

[B]

Right? Yeah, that is. And that Betrays a fundamental lie that defenders of Barry Weiss and defenders Bezos engage in. When they try to talk about this as if, well, these were stagnant businesses and you need to shake it up and try something different. That got stuck in their bubble and it's just like, okay, that's never been what it's about.

[C]

Yeah, no, it's never been what it was about.

[B]

For starters, at the Washington Post, they had a successful business under Trump 1.0. So you could have just replicated that if you wanted to. If this is just a business thing. And number two for cbs, I would have been sympathetic to that point. That you're just like, okay, nobody's watching these networks. If one of them wanted to put in somebody at the head of news who's a little heterodox and is gonna not sing from the same hymn book as the other two networks in the hopes that they can stave off decline for a few more years and some new viewers, I would have been fine. I don't. That's not a threat to democracy. That would have been fine. But, like, that's just not what is happening. Like, they want to make it seem like that's what's happening. Because what they're actually doing is corruption. Yeah. What they're actually doing is corrupt and an attack on democracy.

[C]

And they won't just say it the way the Fox people will. Right. I mean, and that's the weirdness of it. And what. It's the dishonesty. They pretend that it's. Well, because we want to bring real fairness and, you know, real. And it's all bullshit. And here's the other thing about Barry. I mean, so Bari Weiss's future is tied absolutely not at all to the business success of CBS News. And I would make the case to you that if she came into CBS News and ran it like a normal person in CBS News, profits basically remained the same or they got a little bit better. That would not have helped her career. Whatever comes next after this for Bari Weiss would have been. It should have been like, oh, maybe she's not as reliable as we thought. The fact that she came in and everything up and caused. But caused them to lose some money. Nobody's going to care about the losing money part. She's going to go on to our next thing and her access to capital is going to be much, much increased. Not because, again, nobody cares about her business success. Right. That we were like, hey, well, she proved she's reliable and she can be trusted. And more people who need somebody like that who's reliable will be willing to give her their money.

[B]

Yeah. And the other news item with cbs, which is a piece of all this, is this guy, Peter Attia. I've discussed him on the show, but he's like the doctor, the longevity doctor who was like talking about he loved Jeffrey Epstein so much that he was talking about how he would get withdrawals when he wasn't around him. And these emails. He was with Jeffrey Epstein when his young child was in the icu. They were having their meeting and he told his wife. Business meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. Anyway, Barry had chosen him to be one of the new contributors to CBS.

[C]

To help shake things up, right?

[B]

Yeah, Help shake things up, bring some new perspectives, The Epstein files get released, this all blows up. There's kind of like some signaling that he's going to be fired or sidelined or whatever. And then quietly.

[C]

Oh, yeah, we're going.

[B]

To keep him around.

[C]

Yeah. So if you. The criminology on this. And Oliver Darcy and Status did the best reporting on this, as he always does. Good job, Oliver. She fought for him. All the other CBS suits were like, dude, we can't do this. This is. Look at this creep. And she was like, no, no, cancel culture.

[B]

Cancel culture bad.

[C]

Anybody who wants to, anybody who, who has done something terrible, we have to keep them precisely because they did terrible things. Because I guess that's the rationale. It's like vice signaling, but in a weird. It's vice signaling as ideology and not just like social pose. And again, if Peter Attia was going to be bringing in 4 million viewers on his own, maybe I'd say, okay, well, you know, I mean, this guy is so famous, he's so big that I understand it's like a business decision.

[B]

Right.

[C]

It's like you've got a star athlete and, you know, we can't cut them because they average 26 points a game. He's just some dude from TikTok and YouTube. Like there, there are 50 more of him out there, you know, it's so very replaceable.

[B]

The most replacement rate for him utterly.

[C]

You know, he's just a Mendoza lying talent at that. At best. For all the people who are like, well, I'm going to give Barry Weiss the benefit of the doubt and, you know, maybe some new blood is what we need. It turns out that like everything else, she is what we thought she was. And in fact, she's actually a little worse. Like with Trump 2.0 and the extent of. I, I will never understand why people on the sort of Liberal democracy side feel the need to bend over backwards to assume. Like Lucy with the football. Right. You know, oh, this time I'll be okay.

[B]

This is my whole thing with Bari. From the start, it's like I was never. I'm not like this huge hater of her. And I've met her wife and she was nice to me. And so it's not like I had some or even, as I mentioned, care if CBS gets a little bit more pro Israel or anti woke. It's not the big deal. There's plenty of media outlets out there. The problem is that the fundamental sin is that she was put in this job as a corrupt deal with the administration. There was nothing she could have done that could have been good faith. There was an original sin and. And everything.

[C]

And she pretends and that's the other. She just dishonest about it all.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Just be honest.

[B]

Everything that has happened since there then has borne out like the, you know, fallout from that original.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. At least Roger Ailes admitted that he was Roger Ailes.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

He's a piece of shit, but he never pretended to be anything else.

[B]

He really didn't hark you back to the good old days. All right, jvl, I'm off to the French Quarter. Laissez les bonten roulette. I'll see you tomorrow. In. In Minnesota, I told Rick Wilson that when Carville couldn't do the pod today, I thought about coming to you as a pod replacement. But then I was like, you know, JVL is really more of an Ash Wednesday person than a Mardi Gras, you know, and so we're going to see you tomorrow. And I feel like being in the Ash Wednesday spirit is probably more aligned.

[C]

I have never done anything even tangentially associated with Mardi Gras once in my life.

[B]

Exactly. Exactly. Well, you're missing out. Never too late.

[C]

Next year I'll come down to New Orleans and you will take me out for something on Mardi Gras, and it'll be great.

[B]

All right? St. Anne fried banana daiquiri. That's JVL. Appreciate you all. Subscribe to the feed. Live in Minnesota. Tomorrow night, we'll have a bunch of stuff for you. So stick around, tell your friends. See you soon.

[C]

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