Good commentary on CNN this morning. It's astonishing to me that corporate America, including big media, doesn't seem to understand this. Or maybe they do, but they're more than happy to put profits before principles. In any event, what Trump and MAGA are doing to the concept of a regulated free market is what a one-year old does to a birthday cake. Shame on those continuing to defend it.
Late last year, ABC News spent $16 million to settle a defamation lawsuit with President Donald Trump. At the time, you could squint and see the business sense of it: Just pay up, say you’re sorry and this will all blow over.
It’s not blowing over. And it won’t.
Across Corporate America, companies are learning the hard way that giving Trump what he wants won’t appease him — it will only stoke his appetite. (It seems some folks have forgotten the sage wisdom underpinning Laura Joffe Numeroff’s 1985 classic “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” Spoiler alert: The mouse has some more demands.)
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The companies also claim that canceling “
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in July was purely a business decision and not a concession to a president who doesn’t like being the target of Colbert’s jabs.
That “it’s just business” line has become a go-to defense for Trump against accusations he is attacking free speech.
On Thursday, Trump and other Republicans
insisted that Kimmel’s suspension was a decision driven by poor viewership rather than punishing dissent.
“He had bad ratings more than anything else,” Trump
said. Senate Majority Leader John Thune echoed that sentiment, saying Kimmel was simply a victim of market forces and that the network made “economic market decisions.”
But it still smells a bit funny.
While late-night TV viewership has been declining across the board, Kimmel and Colbert have ranked among the highest-rated shows among the key demographic of viewers ages 25 to 54. The shows are also popular on YouTube and TikTok, which don’t count toward TV ratings. It may be true that Kimmel and Colbert weren’t making enough money, but it’s impossible to ignore the timing of the decisions.
“It’s not a business decision. It was a political decision, full stop,” said journalist and media critic Jeff Jarvis in an interview. “If Colbert was losing money, why wasn’t he canceled a year ago? Why wasn’t Kimmel canceled before? The business of linear television is tough, true, but … you could make Colbert or Kimmel very inexpensively if the network wanted to make it profitable.”
And Trump himself is starting to give up the game.
On Air Force One on Thursday, Trump also appeared to depart from the “business decision” line and acknowledge that he just really doesn’t like being made fun of and thinks networks’ broadcast licenses should be revoked if they air overwhelmingly negative perspectives on him.
“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do,” he said. “They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
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Bottom line: Corporate America made a big gamble on the theory that playing nice with Trump, a leader known to pick fights on social media that can tank a company’s stock, would buy them some kind of goodwill. It’s not working. Carr and Trump won’t stop with Kimmel — in fact, Trump already posted on social media Thursday that “Jimmy and Seth” (Fallon and Meyers) should be on NBC’s chopping block. “Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”
Separately, Carr said he thinks it would be “worthwhile” to have his agency “look into whether ‘The View’ and some of these other programs … still qualify as bona fide news programs.”
ABC gave the administration a $16 million cookie. It’s coming for its glass of milk.
“Those who cave in — those like ABC who cave in — what they do is give the bully an even bigger appetite,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told MSNBC on Thursday. “When they appease the bully, they put all of us at risk.”
deadline.com
