Baratunde Thurston and Bill Kristol appear on The 11th Hour With Brian Williams on MSNBC.The 11th Hour With Brian Williams/MSNBC

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Video mix-up or intentional gag? MSNBC’s 11th Hour host Brian Williams announced last night that the station would be airing exclusive video from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Thursday meeting with former President Trump. But what rolled instead was a famous scene from Jerry Maguire.

“You complete me,” Tom Cruise says. Renee Zellweger’s character responds, “You had me at hello.”

“Obviously we have rolled the wrong clip,” Williams deadpanned, while his guests, Baratunde Thurston and Bill Kristol, each cracked a smile. “We were sold a bill of goods here. I thought this was going to be of the McCarthy and Trump meeting, and someone’s gonna be of course in big trouble.”

As far as I can tell, no such video of McCarthy and Trump actually exists. Thurston followed up on the segment with a statement from the “Office of the Not-President” lauding the joke:

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Owned by no one—except you.

We just keep seeing it happen: Newsrooms owned by billionaires and corporations are spinning their own narratives, overwriting the truth, following only stories that keep them in the pocket of those with even more power.

Not here. We’re not owned by anyone. We’re not part of any cult that demands our allegiance to a bottom line. We’ve spoken up and spoken out while other newsrooms changed their stories—or cut them altogether—to keep the C suite happy.

Our mission is to find the truth and amplify it. That’s why we’re independent, nonprofit, and, crucially, funded by readers. The investigations on our website will always be free to read, watch, and listen to, but our newsroom is powered by readers who pitch in what they can so we can keep asking the hard questions.

Can you chip in today?

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