Ruthless Podcast
Ruthless Podcast
Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook
Spectacular Media Fails of 2025
1 hour 12 minutes Posted Jan 2, 2026 at 10:00 am.
— 2025 media fails
— Sydney Sweeney “great genes” becomes a national freakout
— CBS Saint Patrick’s Day: Irish deportations vs ICE
— Jim Acosta interviews an AI recreation of a murdered child
— Taylor Lorenz praises an alleged assassin as “morally good”
— CNN and the defense-fund moment
— Jim Cramer drops an F-bomb
— Olivia Nuzzi interview spiral and her accountability problem
— Bill Belichick + Jordan Hudson shuts down a standard question
— Anderson Cooper snaps at Chris Sununu on-air
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Show notes
🎙️ We review the year that was 2025, counting down the greatest media failures of last year. To top the list, Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ad. A basic pun about “genes” turns into a prime-time lecture about eugenics and white supremacy, and watching a major network try to make that argument out loud is the kind of thing you still can’t believe is real. Then over to CBS, where John Dickerson tries to compare modern immigration enforcement to Irish discrimination and deportation crackdowns in the 1800s.
📺 Other favorites included in our countdown: Jim Acosta interviewing AI, Taylor Lorenz romanticizing Luigi and Jim Cramer dropping a giant F-bomb on live TV. Plus Olivia Nuzzi’s chaos, Bill Belichick’s off-camera relationship, and Anderson Cooper snaps at Chris Sununu.
🐘 We recap our favorite moments from just a few of our best interviews, like, JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt, Senator Kennedy, Majority Leader Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson. Looking forward to a great 2026 on The Progrum!
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