Greetings! It’s nice of Trump to offer Savannah Guthrie federal law enforcement officers to help find her abducted mother as Victory Girls points out. But it will almost surely come with strings attached at some undetermined point in the future. No one -- especially journalists -- ever wants to be in this man’s debt if it can be avoided. But how can Savannah refuse this offer if it could somehow lead to the safe return of her mother?....More “Melania”: Breitbart reports that not only is the film “gaining more box office steam” after generating $1.25 million in ticket sales on Wednesday, it will expand its distribution in the U.S. to 2,000 theaters. “As of Monday, ‘Melania’ had already out-grossed the total domestic earnings of five movies nominated for Oscars this year,” wrote Breitbart’s John Nolte. “So, what we have here is another example of the corporate media’s growing impotence.” Worth noting: There’s a Melania Trump fan page on TikTok with nearly 74 million followers. That’s huge...Weekend Watch: The Winter Olympics kicks off tonight on NBC with de rigeur glitzy opening ceremonies in the Italian Alps. Sadly, Savannah Guthrie’s absence (she was supposed to co-anchor) casts a pall over the festivities. Also, on NBC: The Grammy-award-winning superstar Bad Bunny headlines a musical extravaganza that will interrupt a football game, as well as  millions of dollars worth of splashy commercials. Turning Point USA will stream a competing concert to Super Bowl LX  dubbed  The All-American Half-Time Show featuring aging Trump fanboy Kid Rock...If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard

Greetings!  The White House Briefing Room has a new seating chart. NewsBusters appears to have had the story first last night. Where journos sit in this room – ground zero for the heart and soul of the White House press corps -- can either be taken as a barometer of the  power of their respective organizations or a symbol of their decline. New to the Briefing Room are the Daily Wire, The Telegraph and Black Press USA. Axios, NOTUS and  Semafor are also newcomers.  Those finding themselves seatless:  the Voice of America, McClatchy newspapers and Yahoo News...Jeff Bezos just pulled into first place as the country’s most vilified billionaire after axing more than 300 journalists from the newsroom of the Washington Post. Since 2017, the slogan of the newspaper he owns reads, “Democracy Dies in the Darkness.” With the gutting of his legendary newspaper, an essential read in our nation’s capital, and power centers here and abroad, the world just got darker.  Worth noting: FrontPage defends the massive newsroom cuts. “Bezos is many things, but a weak sister isn’t one of them, and he didn’t spend $250 million to maintain it as a place for entitled journos to defy his interests and badmouth him,” writes Daniel Greenfield...Good NY Times roundup of the flood of books being published by possible 2028 White House wannabes.  It includes tomes by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA)...If you keep reading, I’ll keep Righting. Howard