“CBS Evening News” Has Lost Over a Million Viewers Since Bari Weiss Takeover

The plunge in viewership comes as Weiss has ushered in an era of Trump-friendly politics for the network.

Per the above article: CBS Evening News” Has Lost Over a Million Viewers Since Bari Weiss Takeover

“CBS Evening News lost over a million viewers in its first week under its new anchor, Tony Dokoupil, compared to the same period last year, after the network’s billionaire owners installed far right provocateur Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief in October.

Data from media audience measurement firm Nielsen shows that the show lost nearly a quarter of its viewership in the first five days of Dokoupil taking over the program, from January 5 to January 9, compared to the same period last year.”

 

CBS News Is In SERIOUS Trouble After Going MAGA

CBS Evening News has seen its ratings tumble below a critical threshold following a controversial shift in editorial direction, with viewership and key demographics dropping sharply. The decline comes as competitors widen their lead and criticism mounts over the network’s recent changes

 

 

Liberals laughing!

 

CBS, SkyDance & Paramount should be boycotted for being bought by Radical Right Wing MAGA Trump supporter Multi-Billionaire Larry Ellison who is turning CBS into a Pro-Trump Propaganda outlet like FOX FAKE NEWS

If these Radical Right Wing idiots think they’re going to brainwash people into liking and respecting Trump, they’ve got another think coming! I haven’t watched CBS News since they fired Dan Rather and have no intentions of EVER watching it again. HOPE THEY GO BANKRUPT!

 

 

CBS News shelves ‘60 Minutes’ report on notorious prison in El Salvador

‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi is slamming CBS News’ editor in chief Bari Weiss for postponing a report slated to air on December 21. Alfonsi wrote “it is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” The story focuses on a notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has deported some undocumented immigrants.

 

CBS shelves ‘60 Minutes’ story on Trump deportees at the last minute

CBS News suddenly shelved a “60 Minutes” segment featuring the accounts of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Now one of its own correspondents fears the program is being “dismantled,” and some employees are threatening to quit. CNN’s Brian Stelter reports.

 

New CBS News Anchor Says He Will Be Ignoring Experts

Jesse talks about Tony Dokoupil’s new announcement that he will be ignoring the experts.

 

Per the above article: Newly minted host of “CBS Evening News” Tony Dokoupil had a message for viewers to ring in the new year, but not everyone was on board with his new approach for the legacy network’s reporting strategy.

Dokoupil outlined a new direction for CBS News, vowing to focus on the perspective of the average American after years of media putting too much weight on “advocates … academics or elites.” The anchor, who filled the seat once held by Walter Cronkite, Norah O’Donnell and Dan Rather, was appointed under the new corporate ownership of Paramount and the stewardship of new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

CBS News has fallen,” Dr. Kevin Young wrote in a post to X, following the anchor’s social media PSA video. “Americans must now rely on international news outlets rather than US based state run media for factual journalism.”

Another user mocked the anchor asking, “Why is CBS posting Tony Dokoupil’s Fox News audition tape?”

In his straight-to-social media video, Dokoupil named several stories that Americans believe the press missed over the years: NAFTA, the Iraq war, Russiagate, COVID lockdowns, Hunter Biden’s laptop and “the president’s fitness for office.”

 

Larry Sabato on X (formerly Twitter): “Absolutely! You wouldn’t want “academics and elites” who have actually studied a subject to outweigh the off-the-cuff opinions of village idiots. This is how we’re seeing the resurgence of measles, and the widespread belief in almost non-existent vote fraud, among many other… https://t.co/Ouodl7Flx0 / X”

Absolutely! You wouldn’t want “academics and elites” who have actually studied a subject to outweigh the off-the-cuff opinions of village idiots. This is how we’re seeing the resurgence of measles, and the widespread belief in almost non-existent vote fraud, among many other… https://t.co/Ouodl7Flx0

 

 

Per the photo above which is being shared on Social Media; “Billionaire Larry Ellison who believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump used his own money to buy CBS and install his son as the boss”

 

Larry Ellison Just Quietly Became the Most Powerful Man in America

With the Paramount-Skydance merger approved by the FCC, Larry Ellison just showed the world who is the real shot caller in the White House.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the 80-year-old software tycoon and second-richest man in the world, became the Most Powerful Man in the World

On Thursday evening, the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve Paramount’s $8.4 billion merger with fellow entertainment firm Skydance Media. The controversial, long-awaited deal only came about thanks to Paramount’s appeals to this administration: settling a baseless lawsuit that Trump brought against 60 Minutes for “deceptively” editing its Kamala Harris interview, pressuring subsidiary CBS News to shift its “balance” in a right-wing direction, and canceling presidential foe and beloved comedian Stephen Colbert’s highly rated late-night talk show.

Of note: Skydance is owned by Ellison’s son, David, who personally met with both Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr to get the deal done. The elder Ellison is covering most of the cash to close the Skydance-Paramount merger, which will give him significant control over the new company and a chance to carry out, as he detailed in federal filings, a wholesale transformation of CBS in his vision—including broadcasts of complimentary PSAs for Trump administration initiatives.

When Carr announced the merger approval, he positively affirmed “Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network,” including the impending hire of an “ombudsman” who’ll monitor CBS News broadcasts for “bias” as the overall company slashes its diversity, equity, and inclusion guidelines. Said Trump himself of his “friend” Larry Ellison: “I think he’s going to run CBS really well, and I think he’s making a good deal to buy it.”

Through this brazenly corrupt arrangement, the U.S. president has granted one of his pals uninhibited control over a longtime bastion of mainstream, fact-based news, which he openly intends to bend toward his conservative vision. And that’s just one of the ways Trump is helping Larry Ellison become the most powerful and not-so-secretly influential tech mogul in the country.
Oracle, which Larry still runs as chief technology officer and board chairman, is also in talks with David Ellison’s Skydance for a major deal that would see the latter pay the former $100 million a year to run all of Paramount’s tech through Oracle’s valuable cloud-computing software. Skydance already pays Oracle $2.2 million a year for its cloud and platform products, and the FCC explicitly signed off on David Ellison’s plan to run all of Paramount’s and Skydance’s software on the same cloud tech, which will be provided by Oracle.

(the above text is from facebook.com/TheAttitudeWithArnieArnesen/posts/what-does-larry-ellison-the-second-richest-man-in-the-world-the-totally-corrupt-/1461463645410540)

 

CBS / Paramount Caved to Trump’s extortion by paying a multi-million dollar ‘bribe” to settle Trump’s baseless law suit so his corrupt FCC Chief will approve the Paramount-Skydance merger, plus agree to cancel Stephen Colbert, turn CBS into the new FOX NEWS PRO-TRUMP PROPAGANDA outlet and end DEI.  As stated in an article below; “Trump’s FCC Chief Brendan Carr Is Acting More Like a Mob Enforcer Than a Federal Regulator”.

While the ultimate decision to settle involved multiple actors within Paramount, including the board of directors, reports indicate that Shari Redstone, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, was a key proponent of exploring a settlement with Trump. Some executives viewed Trump’s lawsuit as a potential hurdle to completing a proposed sale of the company to Skydance Media, which required the Trump administration’s approval.

Other individuals involved in the settlement process included CBS News executives and legal teams who initially opposed a settlement, citing the First Amendment and the perceived lack of merit in the lawsuit. However, the settlement was ultimately reached through mediation efforts

In a secret meeting between CBS and CBS News’ new owner (Skydance) and the Trump Administration, promised Trump that they would effectively be the new Fox News Propaganda outlet, running Trump approved ads, and putting Trump friendly news and programming on the air.  Trump’s FCC crony just approved the sale of CBS’ parent to a big Trump supporter’s son. Michael Popok takes a  look at a new letter that reveals it all, and what it means for CBS and its viewership.

 

After his most recent interview with Norah O’Donnell on CBS News, it’s clear Trump’s control over the media is stronger than ever. Steve Schmidt reacts to the O’Donnell interview and highlights the influence of tech oligarchs.

 

Trump’s Top 10 Lies on 60 Minutes, in 10 Minutes

 

POLITIFACT: Fact-checking Trump’s ’60 Minutes’ interview

 

60 Minutes HID THIS TRUMP INTERVIEW SEGMENT & Kash Patel uses Gov’t Jet as Uber

 

Trump LOSES IT in HIGHLY EDITED 60 Minutes Interview

 

Trump claims he doesn’t know Binance billionaire he pardoned

 

Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ’60 Minutes’ | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump littered his new “60 Minutes” interview with a wide-ranging assortment of false claims, the vast majority of them previously debunked. We counted at least 18 inaccurate assertions.

Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minute

• Falsely claimed “$17 trillion” is being invested in the US “right now,” though the $17 trillion figure is nearly double the White House’s own wildly inflated figure.
• Falsely claimed each alleged drug boat the US has attacked in recent weeks “kills 25,000 Americans,” though experts note this figure plainly does not make sense.
• Falsely claimed some recent former presidents invoked the Insurrection Act “28 times,” though no individual president has invoked it on more than six occasions with this record set by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1800s.
• Falsely claimed he has ended “eight wars,” though his list includes two situations that were not wars at all and at least one war that continues.
• Falsely claimed CBS aired an edited interview with Trump’s 2024 opponent Kamala Harris “two days” before the election, though it was actually more than four full weeks before Election Day.
He falsely claimed former President Joe Biden gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine (the real number is well under half that) and allowed in “25 million” migrants (the real number here is well under half that, too).

And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.

• Trump falsely claimed, “We have no inflation” and “we don’t have any inflation.” (He said at another point of the interview that “essentially we don’t have inflation.”) He also falsely claimed, “We’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.” There is inflation; it has been worsening since May after hitting a four-year low in April; and it’s not 2% or less than 2%. The year-over-year rate was about 3% in September, up from about 2.9% in August; the September figure was nearly identical to the roughly 3% rate in January, the last partial month of the Biden administration and first partial month of the second Trump administration.

• Trump falsely claimed that President Joe “Biden gave me the worst inflation rate in the history of our country” and that “I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Trump could have fairly said the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high under Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920 — and, again, the rate then declined to about 3% in January 2025, the month Trump took over from Biden. Trump’s claim was also wrong if he was claiming there was record cumulative inflation over the course of Biden’s presidency. It was about 21%, compared with about 49% during President Jimmy Carter’s term.

• Trump repeated his frequent false claim that “we have $17 trillion being invested in the United States right now,” then said moments later that it is “more than $17 trillion right now.” This “$17 trillion” figure is fictional even without the “more than.” As of the time the “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday, the White House’s own website said the “major investment announcements” this term totaled “$8.9 trillion” — and a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges from foreign countries and companies, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, or vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges

• Trump claimed, as he often does, that China and other foreign countries pay the tariffs he has imposed on their exports. In reality, US importers, not China or other foreign countries, make the tariff payments to the US government, and they often pass on at least some of the costs to consumers; study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, found that people and entities in the US bore almost the entire cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on Chinese products.

• After Trump was asked about the recent US military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, he said, “Every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans. Every single boat that you see that’s shot down kills 25,000 on drugs, and destroys families all over our country.”  Aside from the fact that the Trump administration has not presented public proof for his repeated claims that the boats carried fentanyl, the drug involved in the highest number of US overdose deaths — the Caribbean is not known to be a significant fentanyl-smuggling route — his “25,000” number does not make sense. The total number of US overdose deaths from all drugs in 2024 was about 82,000, according to provisional federal data. Trump is essentially claiming, in other words, that attacking 16 boats prevented more than four years’ worth of American overdose deaths.

• Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.

• The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.

Grocery prices

When O’Donnell noted that Americans have “seen their grocery prices go up,” Trump repeated his regular false claim that grocery prices are actually declining: “No, you’re wrong. They went up under Biden. Right now they’re going down. Other than beef, which we’re working on, which we can solve very quickly.” Trump repeated later in the interview, “Our groceries are down.”

Grocery prices are up under Trump — and while there has been a particularly large increase in the price of beef, there have also been increases in the price of numerous other products. Consumer Price Index figures for September showed average grocery prices had increased since August (about 0.3%), since September 2024 (about 2.7%), and since January 2025 (about 1.4%), the month Trump returned to office. Prices in all six major grocery product categories tracked by the Consumer Price Index, such as “fruits and vegetables” and “cereals and bakery products,” are up over the past year.

Inflation under Trump

• Trump falsely claimed, “We have no inflation” and “we don’t have any inflation.” (He said at another point of the interview that “essentially we don’t have inflation.”) He also falsely claimed, “We’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.” There is inflation; it has been worsening since May after hitting a four-year low in April; and it’s not 2% or less than 2%. The year-over-year rate was about 3% in September, up from about 2.9% in August; the September figure was nearly identical to the roughly 3% rate in January, the last partial month of the Biden administration and first partial month of the second Trump administration.

Inflation under Biden

• Trump falsely claimed that President Joe “Biden gave me the worst inflation rate in the history of our country” and that “I inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Trump could have fairly said the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high under Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920 — and, again, the rate then declined to about 3% in January 2025, the month Trump took over from Biden. Trump’s claim was also wrong if he was claiming there was record cumulative inflation over the course of Biden’s presidency. It was about 21%, compared with about 49% during President Jimmy Carter’s term.

Investment in the US

• Trump repeated his frequent false claim that “we have $17 trillion being invested in the United States right now,” then said moments later that it is “more than $17 trillion right now.” This “$17 trillion” figure is fictional even without the “more than.” As of the time the “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday, the White House’s own website said the “major investment announcements” this term totaled “$8.9 trillion” — and a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges from foreign countries and companies, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, or vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges. You can read more here.

Who pays tariffs

Trump claimed, as he often does, that China and other foreign countries pay the tariffs he has imposed on their exports. In reality, US importers, not China or other foreign countries, make the tariff payments to the US government, and they often pass on at least some of the costs to consumers; study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, found that people and entities in the US bore almost the entire cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on Chinese products.

Strikes on alleged drug boats

After Trump was asked about the recent US military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, he said, “Every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans. Every single boat that you see that’s shot down kills 25,000 on drugs, and destroys families all over our country.”

Aside from the fact that the Trump administration has not presented public proof for his repeated claims that the boats carried fentanyl, the drug involved in the highest number of US overdose deaths — the Caribbean is not known to be a significant fentanyl-smuggling route — his “25,000” number does not make sense. The total number of US overdose deaths from all drugs in 2024 was about 82,000, according to provisional federal data. Trump is essentially claiming, in other words, that attacking 16 boats prevented more than four years’ worth of American overdose deaths.

The president’s figure is “absurd,” Carl Latkin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health with a joint appointment at its medical school, said in October. “He’s claiming that he’s solved the overdose mortality crisis” with four boat strikes, and “that does not have any semblance of reality.” You can read a longer fact check here.

Trump and wars

Trump repeated his false claim that he “knocked out eight wars,” adding, “I took eight wars and stopped (them) during an eight-month period” this presidency. Reading from a paper, he listed “Cambodia-Thailand,” “Kosovo-Serbia,” “the Congo and Rwanda,” “Pakistan and India,” “Israel and Iran,” “Egypt and Ethiopia,” “Armenia and Azerbaijan,” and “Israel and Hamas.”

Trump’s “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.

There was no war between Egypt and Ethiopia for Trump to end; the two countries were in a long-running diplomatic dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River, but that is not a war, and the dispute is unresolved. Trump’s list includes another supposed war that didn’t occur during his presidency, between Kosovo and Serbia.

Trump repeated his false claim that “Joe Biden gave $350 billion to Ukraine, including a lot of weapons, a tremendous amount of weapons.” The “$350 billion” figure isn’t close to accurate.

The US government inspector general overseeing the federal Ukraine response says the US had disbursed about $94 billion as of the end of June 2025 (and had appropriated about $93 billion more), including money that was spent in the US and in broader Europe rather than Ukraine itself. And a German think tank that has closely tracked wartime aid to Ukraine says the US allocated about $135 billion to Ukraine (and had committed about $5 billion more) through August, at current exchange rates.

 

 

Critics Slam Heavy Editing Of Trump’s ’60 Minutes’ Interview

CBS aired a condensed, 28-minute version of a 73-minute interview for “60 Minutes.”

Per the above article: Here’s What CBS Cut Out Of Its ‘60 Minutes’ Interview With Trump

Trump, who told O’Donnell she could cut his comment from the interview, said, “’60 Minutes’ was forced to pay me a lot of money… You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news.” He then went on to say he sees “good things happening in the news” thanks to the recent acquisition of Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, by David Ellison’s Skydance Media: “I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press” (last month Trump called the Ellisons “big supporters of mine”). Among other comments cut from the initial broadcast were claims the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” and an attempt to get O’Donnell, who lives in Washington D.C., to admit she’d seen a reduction in crime in the city since he took office. After asking her several times if she’d noticed a difference, O’Donnell said she hadn’t “been out and about that much,” to which Trump replied, “Oh, that’s not a fair answer. You see the difference.” Trump several times acknowledged that the interview was going to be edited, saying things like “you don’t have to put this on” and “you don’t have to use that one.”

Key Background

The interview was the first Trump has done with “60 Minutes” in five years and the first since his lawsuit over the Harris interview. He sued for $20 billion and claimed the show deceptively edited Harris’ answer to a question about the Israel-Hamas war after a preview of the interview used a different answer than the official broadcast. The network later released a full transcript of the interview that showed it ran the first sentence of her answer in the preview and the last sentence during the show. Paramount later agreed to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit, and admitted no wrongdoing. Networks commonly edit interviews for clarity and length to fit their broadcast schedule.

Chief Critic

CBS and O’Donnell have taken flack from elected officials and other journalists for how the interview was conducted, and the heavy edits. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., posted to X: “Maybe I should file a complaint with the FCC against the Trump White House for editing his unhinged 60 Minutes interview. It will use the exact same language Trump lodged against Vice President Harris.” Jonathan Uriarte, spokesperson for FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, said the edits and Trump’s seeming awareness they would be made “could qualify as news distortion and deserves an investigation” according to the standard set by the Trump FCC. Political commentator Tim Miller posted on X: “60 Minutes did not air the part where Trump discusses his success in extorting the network and calls them Fake News. This edit is harmful to me and I’m considering suing.” Former MSNBC host Joy Reid called out the interview style itself, saying, “Norah let Trump lie and lie with barely any pushback or provision of corrective facts.”

 

Brian Stelter explains $16 million settlement between Paramount and Trump

 

Veteran reporter Dan Rather Blasts CBS for Caving to Trump’s extortion so a corporate merger can proceed without being blocked by Trump’s LAWLESS administration

 

Ending DEI, clash over freedom of press: Inside the Paramount-Skydance merger

The Trump Fascist Regime approved the sale of CBS’ parent company Paramount to Skydance. Puck founding partner Matthew Belloni joins Katy Tur to explain more on the details of this $8 billion merger and to react to “South Park” making fun of Trump and Paramount.

 

Nicolle blasts Paramount’s capitulation to Trump: ‘The short-sightedness is what’s stunning’

President of Media Matters for America Angelo Carusone and President of Brialliant Corners Research Cornell Belcher join Nicolle Wallace to discuss the FCC’s approval of Paramount’s merger with Skydance after they made a series of decisions favorable to the Trump administration.

 

Senator Chris Murphy discusses Paramount-Skydance merger and Trump’s censorship

 

The politics behind the $8B Paramount-Skydance merger

The FCC approved Skydance Media’s $8 billion bid to acquire Paramount, the parent company of CBS. The green light from the FCC comes after Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement with President Trump over his lawsuit accusing “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

 

 

Per the above article: CBS News facing new ‘disaster’ and plummet in ratings after ‘failing’ experiment

It appears changes meant to try and bring ratings back up at CBS News after struggles are failing, plunging the network into a further crisis.

Mainstream and legacy media networks have all been feeling the pinch in recent years as ratings decline across the board, seeing shifts in personnel who leave, shuffling around of schedules, and consideration of layoffs.

“It’s a disaster,” a source credited as a former CBS News exec told The Daily Mail. “It’s been critically panned, ratings down week by week and from this time last year.” Following a parade of exits by Executive Producers and CEOs, the network has been in a ratings slump that is even being categorized as a “five-alarm fire.”

“It’s mind boggling,” another source said. “They took the ‘news’ out of the Evening News!’ It’s not surprising the audience is leaving in droves.'”

With viewership allegedly down 14 percent year-over-year, it’s believed the decline is directly related to the format change, which is similar in structure to shows like 60 Minutes and Access Hollywood. The Evening News allegedly saw a 24 percent drop in the 25-54 demographic from last year the week of February 10, according to Nielsen ratings, showcasing what many feel is a sure sign the change isn’t working. “That demographic is very important to advertisers,” the exec said. “The experiment is failing.”

 

 

 

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In 1969, CBS canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour after their anti-war satire and civil rights advocacy clashed with right-wing network censors. 56 years later, in 2025, history repeats as CBS axes The Late Show with Stephen Colbert its Top-Rated Program — after Colbert condemned Paramount’s $16M settlement with Trump, calling it a ‘bribe’.

Both shows were silenced under the guise of ‘financial reasons,’ but the truth is clear: CBS has always aligned with fascist, anti-free-speech agendas when power feels threatened.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

— George Orwell, 1945

 

Trump’s FCC Chief Brendan Carr Is Acting More Like a Mob Enforcer Than a Federal Regulator

With a new GOP majority, the incoming FCC boss aims to punish criticism, reward obedience-and screw the public.

Per the above article: Trump’s FCC Chief Brendan Carr Is Acting More Like a Mob Enforcer Than a Federal Regulator

“With a new GOP majority, the incoming FCC boss aims to punish criticism, reward obedience—and screw the public.

Once a wonky telecom regulator that mostly avoided politics, the FCC is now at the leading edge of President Donald Trump’s crusade to turn the federal government into an instrument of his own will.

Since January, Trump’s FCC chief Brendan Carr has weaponized the agency to intimidate news organizations and media companies by threatening their broadcast licenses and launching sham investigations into their business practices and diversity programs. Carr is also racing to roll back FCC regulations, eliminate consumer protections, and unleash further media consolidation. Last week, the Senate confirmed former GOP congressional staffer Olivia Trusty to the agency, giving Carr the majority he needs to forge full-steam ahead with his MAGA agenda.

Free speech advocates call Carr’s actions a blatant violation of the First Amendment and federal law, and an egregious and unprecedented abuse of the agency’s power. A bipartisan group of former FCC commissioners recently accused Carr of turning the agency into the “White House’s personal censor.” In addition to cracking down on disfavored speech, the agency has already begun offering favors like merger approvals to media companies in exchange for their loyalty to the president.

“This is the most corrupt FCC in the agency’s history,” Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Nation. “What we’re seeing now is outright Mafia-style behavior where the FCC is trying to shake down corporations and entire industries to carry out Trump’s agenda.”

Carr has threatened Comcast, which owns MSNBC, with the loss of its broadcast licenses because Trump was offended by the network’s coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the administration admits was mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador. And he’s launched an investigation into CBS after Trump repeatedly called for the cancellation of the network’s broadcast licenses and demanded that the FCC impose “maximum fines and punishment” over a disputed 60 Minutes broadcast.

“The idea that we would revoke a broadcast license based on editorial decisions is antithetical to the First Amendment,” Anna M. Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, told The Nation. “We need the FCC to honor the Constitution, to comply with the Communications Act prohibition against censorship, and to stand up to these types of attempts to weaponize the agency in order to retaliate against broadcasters.”

It’s quite a turnabout for Carr, who in 2021 declared that “a newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them.”

For nearly a century, the FCC operated mostly outside the realm of politics, regulating the nation’s airwaves, licensing TV and radio stations, and promoting competition and diversity across the media landscape. Although FCC commissioners are nominated by the president, Congress designed the agency to act independently from White House influence, and for the most part, FCC chiefs treated that independence as essential to ensuring free speech and diversity over the nation’s airwaves.

Trump and Carr’s complete disregard for that principle is evident in their campaign of coercion against 60 Minutes, which has infuriated the president with its critical coverage of his hostility to Ukraine and imperial ambitions for Greenland. In an apparent attempt to bolster Trump’s bogus $20 billion lawsuit over last summer’s disputed Kamala Harris segment, Carr launched a “news distortion” investigation into CBS and has slow-walked approval of its parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media. Paramount, in turn, has reportedly begun influencing 60 Minutes news coverage, leading to the resignation of two senior executives.

Carr, who has recently taken to wearing a gold Trump-head lapel pin, is also doing his part as a loyal MAGA minion by pressuring media giants like Comcast and Disney to join Trump’s anti-diversity crusade and abandon their DEI hiring policies. He’s threatened to block merger proposals from companies that fail to do so. In an abject display of corporate capitulation, Verizon dutifully obliged in order to win approval of its $20 billion buyout of Frontier Communications.

The Trump FCC’s assault on the First Amendment has been so shocking that it has diverted attention from Carr’s extreme pro-business, anti-consumer agenda. In April, Carr launched what he called a “massive deregulatory initiative” that public interest group Free Press described as “a brazen attempt to roll back consumer safeguards on a widespread scale for industry’s convenience.” The pro-consumer FCC policies on the chopping block amount to a big-business wish list that includes eliminating broadband label and truth-in-billing requirements, rolling back restrictions on scam robocalls and texts, and watering down digital discrimination rules that encourage equitable broadband deployment.

Given Trump’s illegal firing of two Democratic commissioners at the FTC, public interest advocates warn that Trump could fire Gomez, the remaining Democratic FCC commissioner, while elevating recently departed GOP commissioner Nathan Simington’s former chief of staff, 31-year-old MAGA ideologue Gavin Wax, who once declared that Trump’s reelection would be a “time for retribution.”

Wax would fit right in. If President Trump behaves like a Mafia boss, then Carr is acting like a MAGA enforcer, threatening Trump’s media enemies while doling out favors for corporate interests with little regard for the collateral damage done to the rule of law or the public interest. It’s a familiar Trump formula: weaponize the federal government to punish criticism, reward obedience—and screw the American public”.

 

Ted Cruz compares FCC chair’s threats to mob tactics

 

 

Skydance pledges to Trump’s FCC it’ll eliminate DEI, install ‘ombudsman’ to root out ‘bias’ at CBS News | CNN Business

Skydance needs FCC approval in order to take over Paramount. It’s now promising to root out “bias” at CBS News in order to get it.

 

After settling with Trump, CBS News staffers fear what comes next | CNN Business

Paramount Global is being hammered for bowing to presidential pressure and settling a lawsuit that it likely could have beaten in court.

Per the above article: “Employees at CBS News, which produces “60 Minutes,” feel the same way. “There is great fear about what comes next,” a CBS News staffer told CNN on condition of anonymity. Even though Trump’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit is now history, his bullying tactics will continue to challenge media companies for the foreseeable future.

“Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said Wednesday. “This settlement will only embolden the president to continue his flurry of baseless lawsuits against the press — and against the American people’s ability to hear the news free from government intrusion.”

A ‘monument to Paramount’s surrender’

According to the terms of the settlement, which were announced late Tuesday night, Trump will drop the suit in exchange for $16 million toward his presidential library. The financial terms mirror the deal that Disney’s ABC struck with Trump last December.

“Trump’s presidential library will be a permanent monument to Paramount’s surrender,” remarked Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

Other press freedom advocates called the CBS parent’s decision a “spineless” and “shameful” capitulation.

Veteran media reporter Paul Farhi said on X that it was “fascinating how Paramount has borne the bulk of the criticism for agreeing to this payoff. As if Trump is a passive bystander who played no role.”

The conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, focused on Trump’s conduct in a sharply critical piece on Wednesday night.

“The President is using government to intimidate news outlets that publish stories he doesn’t like,” the Journal wrote. “It’s a low move in a free country with a free press.”

David Ellison, son of the billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, was seen schmoozing near Trump at two different UFC matches earlier this year, stoking speculation that he was leaning on personal relationships to help get the merger approved.

On Wednesday, Paramount pushed back on a New York Post report about a “side deal” between Ellison and Trump involving TV airtime for public service announcements promoting Trump-aligned causes.

“Paramount has no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement proposed by the mediator and accepted by the parties,” the company said.

But the report only intensified questions inside CBS News about how Ellison might approach owning the news division in the future.

While journalists at “60 Minutes” and across CBS News are concerned about the situation, they ultimately want to move on and continue doing their jobs.

“This settlement is not a reflection on the essential and bold work of 60 Minutes of CBS,” Tompkins told CNN. “It is a reflection of a vindictive president and corporate heads who did not value one of the fundamental principles that underpin the ownership of a news organization.”

“That principle,” he said, “is stated as the second tenet of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: Act Independently.”

 

 

Right-wingers turned Hungary into a anti-democratic fascist one-party-rule dictatorship. Trump & Republicans have followed the same playbook

 

Trump Endorses Right-Wing Autocrat In Hungary

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and former FBI special agent Clint Watts discuss with Nicolle Wallace the former president’s endorsement of Viktor Orban ahead of the Parliamentary elections in Hungary.

Trump is following Viktor Orbán’s playbook of how he destroyed Democracy in Hungary and became a de-facto Dictator

 

Thom Hartmann explains in the video above how Victor Orbán and his Radical Right-Wing Party took over the once Democratic government in Hungary and turned it into a anti-democratic authoritarian fascist one-party-rule dictatorship where elections & the courts are rigged, all of the media is state controlled and praise for Victor Orbán Propaganda is seen everywhere.

This is where the United States is headed unless Trump is stopped by impeachment or exposing him as a Illegitimate President who rigged the 2024 election (as detailed this site).