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Despised Team Owner Dolan Shouldn't Make Knicks Visit Trump's White House

New York has been electric since the Knicks completed their storybook playoff run on Saturday to deliver long-suffering fans throughout not only the city but the entire tri-state area their first NBA title in 53 years.

On Thursday, millions of fans gathered in lower Manhattan for the traditional ticker-tape parade down the aptly named “Canyon of Heroes,” with jubilant revelers chanting, cheering, and coming together to celebrate the team that finally won it all.

Usually it takes tragedy to bring New Yorkers together. After the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, New Yorkers united to help the families who lost loved ones and the first responders who helped rebuild the city.

And six years ago at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Yorkers would open their windows and bang pots and pans to honor the frontline healthcare workers trying to heal the sick and dying.

Now, we’re witnessing that a happy moment can unite a region, too.

And so, and I say this in the most sincere way possible: Knicks players, please don’t ruin this moment with a visit to Donald Trump’s White House.

The Knicks owner, James Dolan—whose meddling in the team is a large reason why the Knicks stunk so badly for so many years—said Wednesday that the Knicks organization will visit Trump.

“We just did receive an invitation from the White House, which we accepted,” Dolan said on local sports radio station WFAN. “We still have to figure out the details, etc., but yes, of course. Look, I invited the president to come down for the game. He is a friend, I’ve known him for 30 years and I’m very proud to bring the team to the White House.”

But you know who wouldn’t be proud of witnessing the Knicks at the White House? The Knicks fans who loathe Trump and everything he stands for. And if the team goes, it will put a damper on the celebratory mood.

Already, Dolan’s support and friendship with Trump nearly jinxed the Knicks’ playoff run. Dolan greatly inconvenienced fans when he brought Trump to Game 3 of the finals between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs. And Trump brought so much negative energy and distraction that the game he attended broke the team’s historic 13-game playoff win streak.

Knicks fans told Dolan how they felt about his decision to bring the wannabe dictator to the game, loudly booing Trump the one and only time his sweaty, orange-makeup-smeared face appeared on the jumbotron.

Forcing players to go to the White House would just be another slap in the face to the fans who have remained loyal to the Knicks despite decades of sadness and mediocrity.

Knicks players need to know: While Dolan wants to visit, you do not have to go. The fans support you, not the team owner.

The players hold the cards in this situation, as Dolan would be vilified as an utter disgrace if he punished the stars who finally won a championship for his franchise for not visiting Dolan’s fellow prick who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

We already know at least two star players hate Trump. Guard Josh Hart, for example, fired this gem on social media when Trump lost the election to now-former President Joe Biden.

“YESSIR!!!! GET TRUMP’S DUMBASS OUT THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!” Hart tweeted at the time.

And Karl-Anthony Towns slammed Trump in 2018, when Trump criticized NBA star LeBron James, who had just given a CNN interview about schools he was opening in his hometown of Akron, Ohio.

“So let me get this straight: Flint, MI has dirty water still, but you worried about an interview about a man doing good for education and generations of kids in his hometown?” Towns wrote in a post on X. “Stop using them twitter fingers and get stuff done for our country with that pen.”

Ultimately, details haven’t been worked out for the Knicks visit—which would make them the first NBA team to visit the Trump White House in either of his two terms. So, hold firm Knicks players. Don’t ruin this jubilant moment with a visit to the White House.

Fearmongers Fail: Major Crimes Hit Record Low In Mamdani's New York

Fox News and right-wing media spent last year's New York City mayoral election fearmongering that Zohran Mamdani's leadership would trigger a surge in violent crime. Now, five months into Mamdani's term as mayor, major crimes are at historic lows.

Recent New York City crime data shows significant drops in murders and shootings, according to New York Daily News:

Crime across the Big Apple has hit historic lows, with record reductions in murders, shooting incidents and shooting victims, according to the NYPD.
Major crime across the city declined 10.6% across the five boroughs — and more than 6% in the city’s subways — in May, according to the latest Police Department figures.
Year to date, murders were down nearly 21%, 102 versus 129 at this time last year, the lowest level ever recorded for the first five months of any year, beating the previous record of 113, set in 2014 and 2017, officials said.
Even New York City’s public housing projects are off to their safest year in history, with the fewest murders, shooting incidents, shooting victims and robberies, according to the positive stats.

Right-wing media painted a much darker picture for New York last year. After Mamdani's primary win, Fox News host Laura Ingraham scrolled through images of 1970s “urban blight” and warned that Mamdani's leadership would transport the city back to a time when “crime was out of control.”

Ingraham's right-wing media cohorts made similar assertions. On Sean Hannity’s radio show, disgraced former Fox host Bill O’Reilly recalled telling his daughter, who lives in Manhattan, “Look, if this guy wins, your lifestyle has to change because crime, violent crime, is going to be a factor in your life. You're not going to be able to go out by yourself at night or even twilight.”

After Mamdani's victory in the general election, Fox Business host Cheryl Casone commented on New York crime rates, with Fox host Kayleigh McEnany responding, “It's going to get worse. … When I look at Mamdani's policies, he wants to end the gang database, which [Police Commissioner Jessica] Tisch has credited with bringing down crime.”

Hannity predicted “the biggest crime wave New York will ever have seen” and “the complete destruction of New York City” if Mamdani was elected.

Fox, which recently warned that Mamdani's affordable housing proposal will lead to “mass killing,” will likely continue to fearmonger throughout Mamdani's term.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

The Midterms Are Democrats' To Lose -- And They May Find A Way

Democrats are buzzing over the surprise victory of Taylor Rehmet in a Texas state senate race. Rehmet won by 14 points in a Fort Worth-area district Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.

That outcome inspired a piece by Republican strategist Karl Rove titled "Midterms Are Dems' to Lose — and They May." Rove doesn't gloss over Republicans' weak spots — the president's dismal approval ratings, falling consumer confidence and the daily churn of Trump-fueled chaos. But he also notes the Democrats' penchant for nominating far-left activists in moderate districts, candidates who inevitably lose the general.

Rove is right about it all, which leads to a question for Democrats: Have they internalized that a Democratic Socialist who wins New York City would be dead on arrival most everywhere else?

The recent unexpected Democratic wins feature a very different sort of candidate: as moderate, pragmatic and, above all, normal. Rehmet checks the boxes for a Texas Democrat. He is a labor leader who served in the Air Force. He focused his campaign on economic concerns and steered clear of the culture wars.

In his postelection interview on CNN, Erin Burnett tried to drag him into national politics. At the news channels, left or right, everything is Trump, all the time.

Burnett notes that Trump posted several endorsements of Rehmet's opponent. And she played the clip wherein Trump runs for cover. "That's a local Texas race," he said sheepishly. "I have nothing to do with it."

Rehmet didn't take the bait and make his victory a referendum on Trump. "Well, I don't believe he was able to vote in this race," he said flatly. "I was so focused on, you know, talking to the voters here and meeting with them."

Burnett then asked him to respond to a Republican spokesman's charge that Democratic moderates are "pushing the same radical socialist agenda" seen from New York to California. "What do you say to that, Taylor?"

Rehmet wouldn't go down that alley.

Thing is, New York's "socialist" mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is an outlier. Though an unusually skilled politician, he took less than 51% of the vote — despite being the official Democratic nominee in a heavily Democratic city.

And moderate Democrats have been winning mayoral races in California. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is cracking down on open-air drug markets and clearing homeless encampments. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan opposes a referendum calling for an emergency five percent tax on billionaires' assets, noting that the top one percent already pay about 40 percent of California's taxes.

Back in Texas, Democrats prepare for another promising outcome. Two prominent Democrats are contending for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn. One is Jasmine Crockett, the firebrand congresswoman for Dallas and its surrounding areas. The other is James Talarico, a state legislator who presents himself as a progressive Christian.

Primary polls show them neck and neck, but Republicans most fear Talarico because he is more culturally attuned to the conservative state. Crockett may be entertaining, but she'd be the weaker candidate.

Both parties drew lessons from a remarkably close special election for a House seat in a mid-Tennessee district. Trump took it by 22 points in 2024. But only a year later, Republican candidate Matt Van Epps won by only 9 points. And he was running against a community organizer backed by the Democratic Socialists. Aftyn Behn came off as kooky and even invited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a rally.

The lesson for Republicans was that their party faces real trouble in the midterms. The lesson for Democrats is broader: Nominate candidates who are bad fits for their districts, then yes, they can lose — even with the Republican brand in tatters.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

State-Run Media Or Media-Run State? On Fox & Friends, The Answer Is Yes

A year into President Donald Trump’s second turn in the Oval Office, it has become virtually impossible to tell where his administration ends and Fox News begins.

Trump arrived for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday morning amid alarm from U.S. allies over his manic, unhinged, and unnerving demands for NATO member Denmark to hand over Greenland. At a Davos speech the day before, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned of a “rupture” in the world order, in which international rules are being replaced by the mantra that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

Here’s how Fox & Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy put it as a helicopter bearing the president touched down in Davos: “It feels like even though this meeting has been going on for a couple days and speeches have been made and interviews have been done, it feels like nothing starts until President Trump arrives — until daddy's home, as so many people say.”

“Just think about the anticipation, the stakes that are going to be made here, just with the presence of President Trump,” she glowed, adding: “Here you have this global conference where President Trump is about to blow it up in terms of his negotiations and stands, and yet nothing starts until he arrives.”

“It is a new day,” she concluded. “America is the center of everything. President Trump is the leader that everything hinges on.”

Campos-Duffy isn’t just a typically sycophantic Fox host with a penchant for conspiracy theories. Her husband, former Fox contributor and Fox Business host Sean Duffy, is one of 24 former network employees who went through the revolving door between the network and the second Trump administration, and he is now the secretary of transportation (Fox & Friends’ former weekend co-host Pete Hegseth is Duffy’s Cabinet colleague as secretary of defense).

At a normal news outlet, employing the wife of a Cabinet secretary for a role which allowed her to shower the president with praise would be an unheard-of ethical disaster. But at Fox, it may not have even been the biggest such calamity of the day.

Less than 15 minutes before Campos-Duffy proclaimed Trump the world’s “daddy,” Fox & Friends brought on the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. The network hired Lara Trump as a commentator after the president took office last year in an absurdly corrupt deal which put a lantern on Fox’s reemergence as a Trump propaganda outlet.

Lara Trump, who Fox employs as the host of a weekly program which she uses to give top Trump officials like Campos-Duffy’s husband soft-focus interviews about the great jobs they are doing for the American people, was there to take issue with the tenor of The View’s Tuesday sitdown with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“Lara, listen, obviously they’re going to like Zohran Mamdani, that’s The View,” said Fox & Friends guest co-host Johnny “Joey” Jones. “But when you see them just gushing over him like that — I mean, he’s been in office for a couple of days, but still.”

“Yeah, well, this is surprising to absolutely nobody,” Lara Trump replied, mocking the “hard-hitting hosts there” for being “obsessed with people like” Mamdani. Because if there’s one thing they won’t stand for on Fox & Friends, it’s shoddy journalism and hosts gushing over their favorite politicians.

All of this happened on the program where Donald Trump built his political following with regular appearances, then watched obsessively throughout his first term for tips on how to govern the country while posting hundreds of times on social media about what he saw on the show.

Is it state-run media, or a media-run state? Yes.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Despised Team Owner Dolan Shouldn't Make Knicks Visit Trump's White House

Fearmongers Fail: Major Crimes Hit Record Low In Mamdani's New York

The Midterms Are Democrats' To Lose -- And They May Find A Way

State-Run Media Or Media-Run State? On Fox & Friends, The Answer Is Yes

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