- Alan Dershowitz is 87-year-old former lawyer.
- He was friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
- CBS News’ new editor praises Dershowitz.
Journalists and commenters have ridiculed the strange statement made by Bari Weiss, the heterodox creator of the anti-woke online publication The Free Press and current head of the Tiffany Network's news division.
“The kids demand Alan Dershowitz,”
one columnist noted, while others snarked that it was “funny” that Weiss felt that the way to reach the common American news consumer was to give more airtime to the celebrity defense attorney.
Weiss, a self-described "radical centrist" and "Zionist fanatic," claimed during an appearance at the Jewish Leadership Conference earlier this month that the recent gun control debate that Free Press hosted between Dershowitz and former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch was representative of her future vision for CBS News.
Weiss, who was seated next to right-wing journalist Ben Shapiro, claimed that Dershowitz and Loesch not only appeared to represent the "center left and center right" of the political spectrum, but that their viewpoints are "where the vast majority of Americans actually are."
She stated that her objective at CBS News was to
"get back to that normalcy"
rather than establish a "centrist news" organization, claiming that
"they have all failed"
since it was like
"trying to force feed spinach down someone's throat."
Weiss discussed how she believed the mainstream media could regain the confidence of the American people, pointing out that "we're not going back" to Walter Cronkite's tens of millions of viewers.
Weiss cited the Free Press debate between Dershowitz and Loesch, the host of a right-wing radio program, as evidence that "people that have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment" can have "good-faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreements and still like each other at the end of the day."
Grim, on the other hand, said that Weiss's argument at the conference persuaded Paramount boss David Ellison, the CEO of CBS News' parent company, to recruit Weiss and buy her media venture.
The voices that Weiss believes are
"mainstream enough to be included in The Conversation always [have] one thing in common: love of Israel,"
according to contrarian podcaster Glenn Greenwald, who has been a vocal critic of Weiss in recent months. He also made fun of the paucity of viewers for Dershowitz and Loesch's debate in The Free Press.
“The example Bari Weiss gave of the ‘charismatic’ mainstream debates she believes will revitalize CBS -- namely, the gun control debate she arranged between Alan Dershowitz and Dana Loesch -- has so far been watched by a grand total of 860 people in the 5 hours since posting,”
Greenwald tweeted.
“Her alternative isn’t moderation. It’s transparency,”
Mediaite’s Colby Hall argued.
“Put people with genuinely different worldviews in the same studio and let them argue with full force, in good faith, on air, where viewers can see how the arguments are made. Actual pluralism, not neutrality theater.”
What evidence links Dershowitz to Epstein beyond legal representation?
Beyond legal representation, Alan Dershowitz has been linked to Jeffrey Epstein through allegations made by Epstein's appellants, most specially Virginia Giuffre. In grounds, Giuffre alleges that she was traded by Epstein as a teenager and that she engaged in sexual hassles with Dershowitz on at least six occasions, including in Epstein’s places, on his islet, in a auto, and on his aeroplane.
She also alleges that Epstein encouraged sexual contact with Dershowitz during these times. These allegations have been vehemently denied by Dershowitz, who provides trip records and affidavits asserting he was n't present at the locales or times described.
Other appellants like Sarah Ransome have made analogous allegations that Epstein directed them to have sexual hassles with Dershowitz. Court documents and police reports include flight logs and testaments that link Dershowitz to Epstein’s social and trafficking conditioning.