Since we’re going to focus on one of the ultimate leftist moments in the history of leftist media, this is going to get strange. My apologies up front, but I’m going to peel back the curtain only enough to try to provide context for this bizarre moment and the leftist ecosystem that produced it.
Let’s start with that moment in question, which is from the MS NOW network (formerly MSNBC). Quite frankly, this demonstrates how civically and historically illiterate leftist “journalists” are in 2026.
God talk is SO foreign to MS NOW. Katy Tur: What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government? They come from you, our creator and heavenly father. Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?
McKay Coppins: I… pic.twitter.com/sfpykN5bYc— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 18, 2026
What they are discussing is a large Christian prayer event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on May 17. House Speaker Mike Johnson (D-La.) was one of the guest speakers, along with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as numerous Christian leaders.
In this clip, that’s leftist host Katy Tur, who was clearly confused by Johnson’s accurate reference to the Declaration of Independence. If Tur had taken a single civics or American history class in high school, she would have known that what Johnson was saying was not only true and correct, but that he was referencing the most basic premise of the founding of American democracy. You know — the same democracy that she and her BFFs on the left constantly say the Republicans want to steal?
To repeat what Tur said (because it’s so baffling), she posed the question, “What about this passage from Mike Johnson, declaring that ‘Our rights do not derive from government; they come from you, our creator and heavenly father.’ Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?”
Her very question is a massive fail, disqualifying her from ever using the term “our democracy” for the rest of her career. Seemingly without realizing she’s taking issue with the first line of the second paragraph of the Declaration, she acts like Johnson is the one who’s misinterpreting things.
For reference, here’s Thomas Jefferson’s line (with input from other founding fathers) that seems beyond Tur’s comprehension: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”
It’s literally all right there. God, equality, and the rights we get from God. Plain as day. Tur either purposely ignored this or is simply so historically illiterate she never understood it.
McKay Coppins, who is one of her three panelists in this segment, is on the staff of the leftist propaganda magazine The Atlantic, so he’s hardly an “originalist.” Still, even he had to step back in the interest of his own credibility and do his best to try to keep Tur from taking the whole segment off the rails.
“I actually think that that idea is not wholly uncommon. I mean, the idea that we have certain inalienable rights that come from God can be read in a fairly benign way, which is basically that we have innate human rights, that our constitution and our government, our democratic government are meant to codify. Right? That idea is not totally abnormal,” he said.
Then he added, “I think the thing that might alarm some people is some of the rhetoric that we heard at this rally is that we’re in a spiritual battle, right? That the forces of good and evil are at work here. And that partisan politics is injected directly into the spiritual, biblical rhetoric. We have heard that for the last couple of years. It’s been ratcheted up more and more, especially since Donald Trump lost in 2020, and it can lead to some dangerous places, if it’s not happened yet.”
Now we have two people on MS NOW who not only can’t understand the thinking behind America’s founding, but who can’t understand what Republicans and the rest of America have been trying to get through to them for decades, particularly these past six years.
McKay, I’m not sure if you believe in God or not — it doesn’t appear so, based on this clip — but Christian faith is much more than a curiosity for intellectuals. It’s the opposite of “dangerous,” in fact. Christians aren’t zoo animals you wander past in a line, pausing to study us through safety glass. We are quite intelligent and productive people who, unlike you, believe there are such things as good and evil. We believe that spiritual battles do take place right here on earth, and that they happen through people.
Where else would evil try to take over the world than through the mechanisms of power, which are largely political?
Seriously, where?
For Coppins to say, “Partisan politics is injected into the spiritual, biblical rhetoric,” he has it completely the reverse of the reality. Christian politicians are increasingly injecting faith-based understanding into their political strategies and arguments. In fact, Coppins notes this in this clip when he says, “It’s been ratcheted up.” But did he ever wonder why?
The answer is the one thing that Coppins and the rest of the left can’t imagine, or if they could, they’d never want to admit. It’s because the left has injected the forces of evil into their own political rhetoric for a long time, and that’s how we ended up with the legalized killing of infants in the womb. It’s how we have legalized child mutilation to advance one of the most serious lies ever spread — that men can become women and women can become men.
It’s not that the left doesn’t understand the facts or the truth; it’s that it wants to assume all power over determining what truth is. It wants to be God.
It’s been said that even Satan isn’t an atheist, because he knows God exists. But what Satan has been able to achieve is to convince a large segment of society that not only does God not exist, but that he does not exist. His evil works do the job for him, and so in the end, you have an MS NOW host seemingly unable to grasp basic U.S. history and the philosophical, moral, and religious thinking behind it all.
Now, before simply writing Tur off as a historical illiterate and a brain-washed leftist, which she is, I wanted to figure out how she got this way.
Katy Tur is 42 years old and was born in California to Bob Tur and Marika Gerrard. Bob Tur was a helicopter pilot and a broadcast news reporter while he and Gerrard raised Katy and her brother.
As you might expect, Katy Tur got the full California education system indoctrination, and then she went on to study philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I’d have to think that somewhere along the way, she took a class that mentioned the Declaration of Independence, but I could be wrong.
It is not clear whether religion was ever a part of Tur’s formative years. In 2013, Katy’s father Bob announced he was transgender and then began the chemical and surgical process to complete his “transition.” Bob became Zoey.
Now, back to Katy. Her career in the news business is not unlike that of so many leftist propagandists who dominate the legacy media. She worked for leftist editors and producers, and she produced left-leaning reports. For doing so, she’s won awards and climbed the ladder of legacy media success.
This would also explain why Tur seems to treat religion and America’s founding with arms-length detachment.
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One of the things you always have to investigate if you want to better understand the whole picture surrounding any journalist is who they are married to. In almost every case, who their spouse is will shed some light.
In Tur’s case, if you want to know how insulated she is from mainstream America, for starters, know that she was in a three-year relationship back in 2006 with Keith Olbermann. Reportedly, he was very hands-on with Tur’s career choices, and he even paid off her student loans.
The one thing I doubt Olbermann covered with Tur was the founding documents of America, but if he did, we can only imagine how bizarre his interpretation would have been.
In 2017, Tur married Tony Dokoupil, the empty suit currently occupying the anchor’s desk at CBS Evening News. After Bari Weiss took over in the CBS newsroom, she elevated Dokoupil to the top. He was framed as the one who would lead the way back to more balanced reporting at the network.
Make no mistake: Weiss is in charge, not Dokoupil. He is better described the way the British describe their news talking heads: He’s a “presenter” of the news, not unlike what Vanna White is to the alphabet.
Tur and Dokoupil have two kids of their own and two kids from Dokoupil’s previous marriage.
Sadly, we’re not quite done with the weirdness of leftism. If you’re wondering who wears the pants in the family, Dokoupil revealed on CBS Mornings that after the birth of his second child with Katy, he underwent a vasectomy.
Okay, now are we at the point of “too much information?” Why, no. No, we are not.
Dokoupil told the network audience that he did so to “take the burden off” his wife, and he urged the men in the audience – both of them – to do the same.
As much as I dearly wish we were done talking about Dokoupil’s southern hemisphere, there is one more thing. Back in 2008, when he was engaged to his first wife, he had decided to convert to Judaism. That was when he received a second circumcision. Because one wasn’t enough? And yes, we only know this because he felt compelled to share it in The New Republic.
Can’t leftists keep anything to themselves? That said, is this not the perfect beta male for a leftist woman? Katy Tur may not be that into democracy and, like, American history, and, like, God and stuff, but she sure seems to know what she wants – or does not want – in a man.
Once you know all of this, while it doesn’t excuse Tur’s historical illiteracy, it does explain a lot of it. The real world — the one in which you and I live — is foreign to her and everyone she surrounds herself with. Only if you live in a bubble like hers can you rise in the legacy news media, make tons of cash, and never really come to terms with the knowledge that God created us, and it’s from Him that we get our most basic human rights.
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