The Horrifying Implications of CBS Firing Stephen Colbert and Doling Out a 16 Million Dollar Bribe to Curry Donald Trump's Favor
A president accusing another president of treason would be a serious matter if it involved anyone other than Donald Trump.
For Donald Trump, every day is Festivus. Each new dawn affords him another opportunity to spend what should be extraordinarily busy, challenging exhausting days airing his grievances on social media.
During his first term, Trump posted constantly about his strong conviction that Democrats and insufficiently worshipful Republicans criticizing him and comedians making jokes about him was illegal, immoral, unethical, unprecedented, and should be punished.
Trump has repeatedly expressed a paranoid, delusional, deeply anti-Democratic conviction that people who make him mad should be fired, investigated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated, lose their license, and/or fined.
For a man who hosted a hit television show for fourteen years, Trump does not understand how television, free speech, or democracy work. Never in the history of the universe has a politician been so willing to give it and so utterly incapable of taking it.
“NO TALENT EQUALS BAD RATINGS” has already entered the lexicon of great presidential quotes.
Every other day, Trump would uncover what he deemed the greatest political scandal of all time. Barack Obama was spying on him! It was bigger than Watergate! Everything that upset Trump was bigger than Watergate.
When Biden or Obama is in office, Trump saw the job of the media and the entertainment industry to be as critical and harsh as possible, to expose rampant corruption and treasonous conspiracies.
When Trump is in office, he sees the media’s role much differently. The 45th and 47th president thinks that the media should promote and publicize his policies. Trump wants the press to explain to the public why Trump’s policies are brilliant, his administration is literally perfect, and his enemies are not only wrong, but evil, insane, treasonous, and motivated by a hatred of him, our country, and its ideals.
Trump sees himself as the voice of the American people. He sees himself as America, personified, so criticizing him is, by definition, anti-American. News that is not wholly positive, by extension, is Fake News created solely to try to stop his incredible winning streak.
The fucked up thing is that there are a number of news outlets that function that way. In his second administration, Trump has given shameless sycophants a seat at the table previously reserved for internationally respected publications that engendered the president’s vitriolic rage by reporting about him accurately.
Trump uses the impossibly vague, broad, and meaningless concept of “Fake News” to disparage anything other than the worship he receives on Newsmax, OAN, and any number of podcasters who have won his favor by depicting him as nothing short of superhuman, the Superman of American politics, but without all the woke immigrant stuff.
When Trump ranted about how Obama should be investigated for treason, late-night hosts should be fired for making jokes at his expense, and prestigious news programs should be investigated or lose their license for reporting negatively about him, grown-ups would take him aside and patiently explain that the First Amendment protected criticism of influential figures and that just because he doesn’t like something, that does not automatically make it illegal or unethical.
That is not the case this time around. There are no grown-ups around anymore. The John Kellys of the world have been replaced by television-trained pod people whose primary qualifications for their cabinet positions are a worshipful attitude toward their boss, paired with a conviction that he cannot do anything wrong, and his enemies cannot do anything right.
Trump loves to file nuisance lawsuits. He conceded as much when he sued the Wall Street Journal for running an article about him writing a pervy note and drawing for his best friend Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, explaining, “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else.”
The president isn’t exaggerating. He really does sue everyone. He doesn’t need a reason beyond hurt feelings.
Trump sued 60 Minutes and CBS for editing a Kamala Harris interview for clarity. He was enraged that 60 Minutes ran a 21-second preview of an answer about the Biden administration's relationship with Israel that differed from a 7-second clip answer to the same question that aired on the show itself.
He says he’s doing it for the American people and the little guy. That makes sense, since nothing matters more to Joe Six-Pack than ensuring that interviews with presidential candidates are not edited down for time. It regularly comes first in polls about what’s most important to the American people. It’s invariably “Interviews being edited for clarity,” followed by the economy.
I’ve been part of the media for nearly three decades now. I used to do a lot of interviews for The A.V. Club, and in every single goddamn one, I edited for clarity. That’s because pretty much everyone stumbles somewhere, even Obama.
Almost every interview is edited for clarity, because readers would rightfully be annoyed if an interview unexpectedly featured half-sentences, throat-clearing, and nonsensical word salads.
I can vouch from first-hand experience that editing for clarity is standard practice.
That’s not how Trump saw it. He demanded 10 billion dollars. Then he decided that wasn’t nearly enough for what he deemed “election interference.”
In what is not at all unusual for him, Trump claimed that the editing of a single clip less than thirty seconds long was deliberately designed to hurt him and help Harris, representing “the biggest scandal in broadcast history.”
In a world where Donald Trump doesn’t have seemingly limitless power despite rampant, clear-cut corruption and an eagerness to punish enemies and reward friends, the case would be laughed out of court.
Even by Trump's standards, the case was pathetic and feeble. It served no purpose beyond feeding Trump’s colossal ego.
60 Minutes did nothing wrong, but the president of the United States decided that they’d committed an unspeakable transgression in making his rival in the 2024 presidential election seem slightly more coherent than she actually was.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where Donald Trump does have seemingly limitless power despite rampant, clear-cut corruption and an eagerness to punish enemies and reward friends.
We also, regrettably, live in a world where CBS seeks approval for an $ 8 billion merger with Skydance, a company owned by Larry Ellison, a Republican who hosted a fundraiser for Trump.
CBS decided that it would be easier and more lucrative to pretend they were wrong and give Trump $16 million than risk having their multi-billion-dollar merger turned down by an administration that wasn’t even trying to hide its corruption.
For their $ 16 million, they got to be publicly humiliated by the most powerful, famous, and petty man in the world. For 16 million, Trump got to use them as an example of how the Fake News media is so fake and so biased that he’s constantly suing them and winning because they know their cases are so weak and his are so strong. In actuality, they’re settling because they don’t want Trump to see them as their enemy and use his tremendous power to hurt them, something he is very eager to do.
It looks like he’s calling for OAN and Newsmax’s licenses to be revoked for being too partisan!
For their $ 16 million, they became a blueprint for how Trump can file nuisance lawsuits against anyone who depicts him in a negative light, not because he has a legitimate case, but rather because the people being sued don’t want to be the target of his wrath or the rage of his psychotically devoted cultists..
The money CBS gave Trump was a payoff. It was a bribe. It was an act of corporate cowardice that must never be forgotten or forgiven.
In his first term, Trump would regularly take aim at late-night talk show hosts whose jokes about him he clearly considered electoral interference and caused the manly man, alpha stud mental distress.
In Trump’s mind, they were all failing, had terrible ratings, and functioned as the media arm of the far-left Marxist, America-hating Democratic Party.
We, as a culture, rolled our eyes and said, “Sure, grandpa. Whatever you say.”
This time, however, CBS, which had given Trump a $16 million bribe to approve their merger with Skydance, unexpectedly canceled Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show because Donald Trump doesn’t like him.
Trump once again claimed victory over the Fake News media. He had another leftist scalp to display proudly for cultists.
The twice-impeached 34-time felon couldn’t keep himself from gloating. He took to Truth Social and sneered, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfield is better than all of them combined, including the Moron who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
How will Colbert ever recover from an Oscar Wilde-worthy zinger like “His talent was even less than his ratings?”
To me, this reads like a clear-cut admission that he’s able to bully businesses into doing his bidding if they want anything from him, and wants ABC to fire Kimmel next for the unforgivable crime of making jokes about the most mockable president in history.
Will I matter? Probably not. Who is going to hold Trump accountable? The Republican Party that he rules with an iron fist? A social media world that experienced a radical right-wing shift over the past few years? A judiciary headed by a Supreme Court full of Trump appointees? A weak and overwhelmed Democratic Party? J.D. Vance?
Non-coincidentally, Colbert referred to CBS’s payment to Trump as a big fat bribe because it was, obviously, a clear-cut payoff to the most transactional human being in the history of the universe.
I hope that Trump is the subject of multiple lawsuits. I hope that Colbert has his day in court.
I also hope that all of the women and people of color who were very overtly fired by the Trump administration for being women and people of color, and consequently DEI and woke by definition, successfully sue for wrongful termination and discrimination.
Trump sure does love suing people. He just sued the Wall Street Journal for running a story about a pervy letter and drawing he made for his close personal friend, Jeffrey Epstein.
The reality show bozo brags that he called up Rupert Murdoch and ordered him to have the story killed (something Trump wants the world to know), but he refused. Murdoch is just too fucking old (93) and rich to bend the knee and kiss the ring of a vulgar charlatan like Trump.
In related news, Trump made us all forget about the Epstein List by bragging about his eagerness to use tremendous power to force the Washington Nationals to change their name back to the Washington Redskins.
"My statement on the Washington Redskins has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way. I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington. The Team would be much more valuable, and the Deal would be more exciting for everyone,” Trump bragged on Truth Social.
I know that the founding fathers seriously considered making the ability to force sports teams to revert to racist names, logos, and mascots a core presidential power, but ultimately chose not to.
There are lots of racist old people apoplectic that modernity and “woke” robbed them of the racist, regressive caricatures they grew up with. So while you and I might see this as a desperate, deranged power grab from someone intent on focusing the public’s attention away from the Epstein List, it’s a winner among senior citizens (like Trump) who think change is bad and wrong, and should be avoided as much as possible.
QAnon cultists seem chagrined that a man they credit with single-handedly wiping out a massive child sex trafficking ring didn’t seem at all eager for the public to learn more about his longtime best friend’s massive sex ring and his relationship with him.
So Trump threw red meat to his base by having Tulsi Gabbard pursue one of their biggest fantasies: Barack Obama in handcuffs or a prison uniform, or, better yet, being hanged for treason.
She vowed to investigate Obama for corruption. It doesn’t matter to Trump’s base that there’s no evidence to support his delusional belief that Obama has devoted his entire post-presidential career to trying to undermine his presidency in every conceivable way.
All that matters to them is that Trump was arrested and convicted of 34 felonies and wants revenge. Trump posted an AI clip of Obama being arrested on Truth Social, which is psychotic and childish even by his standards.
We can’t let Trump win. The future of our country depends upon it. So it has fallen upon us to step up where seemingly all of our institutions have failed by giving in instead of fighting the good, essential fight.
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