You almost have to laugh at the sheer audacity of this one — if it weren’t so perfectly on-brand for the modern press corps.
CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane went on Chuck Todd’s podcast this week to talk about what it was like covering the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Fair enough.
That was a horrifying, history-making moment. But what’s the takeaway for MacFarlane? Not Trump taking a bullet to the head. Not the blood, the chaos, or the carnage. No — the real trauma, according to MacFarlane, came from the crowd looking at him mean.
“I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave,” MacFarlane said, with a straight face. “Not because, I think, of the shooting, but because you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people.”
He said “dozens” of Trump supporters turned on the press that day, shouting things like “You did this, you killed him,” and speculated that if Trump hadn’t stood up and pumped his fist, the crowd would’ve “come kill us.”
To be clear: no reporters were attacked. No reporters were injured. No reporters were killed. But in MacFarlane’s retelling, he was basically seconds away from being lynched by angry Trump voters — so he went on trauma leave.
You can’t make this stuff up.
This is what passes for journalism grit in 2025? Edward R. Murrow was broadcasting live from London while Luftwaffe bombs rattled his studio. Walter Cronkite reported from the beaches of Normandy as bullets flew. They didn’t take “trauma leave.” They didn’t whimper on a podcast about being glared at.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump literally took a bullet to the head and walked out of that rally with his fist in the air. But who’s the victim in the CBS News narrative? Not the president. Not the crowd members who were shot. Nope. It’s Scott MacFarlane, who needed a therapist because some angry Pennsylvanians said mean words.
And that, folks, tells you everything you need to know about the state of legacy media: it’s always about them. Even when it’s not.
