Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, is about to become the latest example of what you might call the Trump Boomerang Effect.

Shortly before airtime on Sunday night, Weiss pulled a piece by 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi about Venezuelan migrants being sent to CECOT, a brutal Salvadoran prison. The ostensible reason was that Stephen Miller—Donald Trump’s Joseph Goebbels—was not in the piece. But CBS News, which thoroughly vetted Alfonsi’s work, had repeatedly asked the Trump Administration to provide an official to be interviewed for their side of the story.

Alfonsi wrote in a note to the staff on Sunday night that the decision was “political” and if not reversed would give Trump veto power over 60 Minutes:

If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.

Big props to Alfonsi for standing up.

Here’s what I’m confident will happen next: Weiss will scramble to protect her reputation. This piece will run soon—probably next Sunday—and will get monster ratings. Weiss will then learn the lesson that Bob Iger absorbed when ABC briefly bent the knee to Trump, who wanted to kill Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Trump’s intimidation boomeranged and made Kimmel bigger than ever. Just as Trump can no longer mess with late-night, he won’t be able to force Weiss to kill stories he doesn’t like. She will continue to be careful about CBS News’ coverage of Trump, but won’t want to be seen as caving again.

The Trump Boomerang Effect extends widely and will be even more powerful after he leaves office. Consider the preposterous, embarrassing, and illegal re-naming of the Kennedy Center as “the Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” To get a sense of how crazy that is, consider that there was never a Stalin-Bolshoi Ballet or a Mussolini-La Scala Opera House. It’s clear that four or eight years from now—whenever Democrats make it back to the White House—this desecration will be removed. The same goes for “The Trump Institute of Peace” and the other government buildings he’s plastering his name on. A few years ago, tenants in a New York apartment successfully had his name removed from their building. We’ll see that in Washington.

Trump Tower will remain, of course, and he’ll eventually have his name on his presidential library and maybe a few other places that he and his family personally pay for. But even with their new billions, the Trumps are too cheap to shell out much on something that doesn’t go into their own pockets. Most of the Trump “friends” who are helping pay for the White House ballroom and other projects in exchange for government favors will disappear once pay-to-play ends. Every time he names something for himself, he’s tossing a boomerang—and lessening the odds of others naming something for him after he’s gone.

Maybe Israel, where some call him Cyrus the Great, will name a street for him. Or Russia. Or Hungary. El Salvador could rename CECOT in his memory. But that’s about it. Without the leverage of the presidency, it will take only a few determined opponents to stop something, even in red states. Is it possible we’ll see some MAGA cultist propose a “Donald J. Trump Elementary School” somewhere? Sure, but the school board will have a slight problem explaining why he’s a good role-model. Richard Nixon carried 49 states in 1972, and he had only three schools to show for it—in Iowa, New Jersey, and Liberia. All were named for him when he was still in office.

The best comparison might be to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who died in 1957. Just as “the McCarthy Era” entered the language, “the Trump Era”—the one we’re living in now—will be remembered for decades, maybe centuries. But there is nothing named for McCarthy in his hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, where even MAGA Republicans have no interest in honoring him. At his peak, McCarthy stood at 50 percent in the Gallup Poll, higher than Trump has ever been. Then he fell. History always gets the last laugh.

Percy Bysshe Shelley got it right in his 1817 sonnet, Ozymandias, right down to the sneer:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This piece appeared originally on the Subtack, Old Goats with Jonathan Alter

The post The Trump Boomerang Effect: Bari Weiss, Meet Ozymandias appeared first on Washington Monthly.

There are many reasons why the second Donald Trump administration has been far more dangerous and destructive than the first. The Heritage Foundation came in ready with a playbook from day one; the tech overlord alliance with the far right infused MAGA with the “move fast and break things” ethic of Silicon Valley; eight years of Trumpification of the GOP ensured far fewer internal hurdles to reckless lawbreaking existed; a much more ideologically aligned Supreme Court paved the way to legalize what previously would have been lawless behavior; and Trump’s popular vote win provided him a greater veneer of institutional legitimacy in 2024 than he had in 2016 when he lost the popular vote. 

But perhaps the greatest boon to Trump’s effort to erect a MAGA autocracy has been the unexpected capitulation of American institutions, especially the traditional media. 

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ABC News and its parent, The Walt Disney Company, could have fought Trump’s weak defamation case over George Stephanopoulos’s technically inaccurate description of the E. Jean Carroll verdict (and very likely won) but instead agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s future presidential library and another $1 million to his lawyer, while posting a groveling editor’s note and ducking sworn depositions. Soon afterward, Disney and ABC briefly canceled Jimmy Kimmel after Trump officials and right-wing activists demanded his firing, only reinstating him after massive public outcry. The message to the White House was clear: make enough threats and the country’s premier broadcast news brands will fold, not fight. 

CBS and its parent, Paramount, followed the same script. After initially calling Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit over a 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview an “affront to the First Amendment,” CBS’s owners quietly settled for $16 million (again routed to Trump’s library and legal fees) just as they were seeking regulatory approval for a merger with Skydance. The newly merged company then installed Bari Weiss, a culture warrior with no broadcast journalism background, as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Within days, she was asking 60 Minutes staff why the country thinks they’re “biased,” an echo of Trump’s long-running attacks. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post editorial board has endorsed all but four of Trump’s clearly unqualified cabinet nominees.  

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This media capitulation is partly a story about monopoly and consolidation. Most of these corporate media players want federal approval for mergers and other related business issues. 

But it’s also about attitude. 

American democracy depends on a truth-telling media unafraid of threats and retaliation. Once that independence vanishes, obtaining real information and fearless perspectives about those wielding power, wealth, and influence will become impossible. 

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When CBS announced that it was killing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert effective next year, it said it was doing so just for financial reasons. It had nothing to do with content or programming. It’s true that the late night category has been having serious financial problems in recent years, and that even though Colbert leads Kimmel and Fallon in the ratings, that these shows don’t make as much money as they used to. But if you believe that Stephen Colbert’s jokes about CBS bribing Donald Trump in recent monologues had nothing to do with this decision, nothing to do at all, I’ve got some swamp land I want to sell you.

Look, I’ve been a friend of Stephen Colbert’s for more than 20 years. I’m not speaking for him tonight. But it’s obvious that David Ellison of Skydance Media and the CBS board want this deal to go through, and they don’t want a petulant, angry president to take any more out of their hide. They want to get off on the right foot with Trump, and so they’ll bend the knee. The problem is that to hold Trump accountable for the duration of his presidency we need ridicule. All of the experts on authoritarian regimes say that making fun of the leader is an essential part of holding him accountable. So after his show goes off the air, we need Stephen Colbert back in the fray and we need other voices of ridicule and other people who are willing to speak truth to power the way Stephen Colbert has in recent months and years.

The post Why Colbert Got Cancelled appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Shari Redstone better change her tune, or she, her board, and her corporate officers may go to prison on bribery charges in 2029.

If you think that’s far-fetched, consider the seamy details of the fracas involving Redstone, Donald Trump, and the Trump-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Paramount offered Trump $15 million to settle his ridiculous $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News over the editing of a pre-election 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, and that Trump wants $25 million and an apology.

Even as Redstone takes the transparently phony step of recusing herself from settlement talks, this would be a big fat bribe, the kind of illegally extorted payment that has routinely sent crooked politicians and ordinary miscreants to the slammer for years. The only thing that ironically obscures the crime is that, as with so much of Trump’s perfidy, it is happening in public view.

Why would Redstone, the heiress chair of Paramount (which owns CBS), settle with Trump when CBS News did nothing even the slightest bit wrong? Because if she doesn’t, the chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, who literally wears a gold Trump-head pin on his suit jacket, will block Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.

Redstone wants her billions, “and she has told people it is her preference to settle the matter and move on with her life,” Charles Gasparino, a well-connected business reporter, wrote Thursday in The New York Post.

Dream on, Shari. The chances of you “moving on with your life” after paying off Trump are between zero and none. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden have already written to you, stating that they plan to investigate whether the deal involved bribery. They will soon have plenty of company in Congress in making your life miserable. That’s just a taste of what lies ahead should you choose to bend the knee. Here’s what will happen as soon as the settlement is completed:

And after that? If a Democrat is elected president in 2028, you can be sure that federal prosecutors would love to bring this case in front of a jury. The five-year statute of limitations on bribery would give them (just enough) time, and the quid pro quo they would have to prove is less complicated than in many bribery cases. While it’s true that the law gives the settlement of claims in civil cases wide latitude, it does not countenance bribery and extortion.

To help clarify why this walks, talks, and quacks like extortion and bribery, let’s go back to last December. That’s when Carr gave an interview to the New York Post where he said: “I’m pretty confident that that news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction.”

Translation: “Nice merger you have there. Pity if something should happen to it.”

It helps to see exactly what is at issue here. In February, CBS News released the full transcript of the Harris interview. Here’s her 140-word answer from the promo for the interview that ran on Face the Nation:

Well, let’s start with October 7th. Because obviously, what we do now must be in the context of what has happened. And as I reflect on a year ago, and that 1,200 people were massacred, young people at a festival, at a music festival, 250 hostages were taken, including Americans, women were brutally raped.

And as I said then, I maintain Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. And as we fast forward into what we have seen in the ensuing weeks and months, far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. And we know that, and I think most agree, this war has to end. And that has to be our number one imperative, and that has been our number one imperative. How can we get this war to end?

And here is the 56-word edited soundbite that ran on 60 Minutes:

Well, let’s start with October 7th. Twelve hundred people were massacred, 250 hostages were taken, including Americans. Women were brutally raped. And as I said then, I maintain Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. This war has to end.

Trump’s lawyers don’t argue that the editing changed the meaning of Harris’s words, only that she looked better in the shorter soundbite. Imagine forking over tens of millions of dollars and possibly apologizing for a low-level weekend editor’s alleged motivation in choosing a newsy soundbite and fitting it to the time allotted for the promo. This is preposterous and would come across as such in court.

The bribery trial would also illuminate some basic, unarguable truths about TV news. Anyone who has ever worked in television or has any familiarity with journalism knows that time constraints routinely require quotes and soundbites to be edited. More important, under the First Amendment, news organizations have an absolute, unfettered right to do so. The only way a plaintiff could get to first base under normal circumstances would be if the editing distorted the meaning of the soundbite, which in this case it was not. Trump just thought that Harris was dumb (even though she had just kicked his ass in their only debate) and CBS was making her look smarter and crisper. Hardly the grounds for a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit.

There are also big First Amendment issues here, of course. If CBS settles it will set a devastating precedent—far worse than the ABC News case, where George Stephanopoulos may have erred in calling what Trump did to E. Jean Carroll “rape” instead of “sexual abuse,” the term employed by the jury.

There’s no conceivable error here. Redstone settling with Trump would send a message to powerful people that they can extort money out of news organizations over accurate and non-defamatory stories that merely displease them. Even if they lack the immense leverage that Trump has, these would-be litigants will feel entitled to intimidate journalists who have done nothing wrong. That would constitute a serious blow to free expression.

A bribery probe and splashy trial would send a different message: Bowing to the White House might send you to the Big House.

The post Shari Redstone Might Be Headed for Jail appeared first on Washington Monthly.

• Trump’s TSA is conducting surveillance on law-abiding citizens. The Boston Globe reports:
  

  Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.

  The previously undisclosed program, called “Quiet Skies,” specifically targets travelers who “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.

  The internal bulletin describes the program’s goal as thwarting threats to commercial aircraft “posed by unknown or partially known terrorists,” and gives the agency broad discretion over which air travelers to focus on and how closely they are tracked.

  But some air marshals, in interviews and internal communications shared with the Globe, say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat — a businesswoman who happened to have traveled through a Mideast hot spot, in one case; a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, in another; a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third.

  It is a time-consuming and costly assignment, they say, which saps their ability to do more vital law enforcement work.

  This is what the Trumpistas had in mind when they voted for Trump based on “law and order,” right?

• Trump repeats his call for a government shutdown over his wall. The actions of a stable genius, I’m sure:
  

  President Trump threatened Sunday to shut down the federal government this fall if Congress does not pass sweeping changes to immigration laws, including appropriating more public money to build his long-promised border wall.

  “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!” Trump tweeted. “Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!”

  Trump’s shutdown warning — which he has made before — escalates the stakes ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline, raising the possibility of a political showdown before the Nov. 6 midterm elections that Republican congressional leaders had hoped to avoid. A funding fight also could prove a distraction from Republican efforts in the Senate to confirm Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by Oct. 1.

  Trump faced immediate words of caution from top Republicans, including Rep. Steve Stivers (Ohio), who leads the National Republican Congressional Committee, which coordinates campaign efforts for House Republican candidates.

  “I don’t think we’re going to shut down the government. You know, I think we’re going to make sure we keep the government open, but we’re going to get better policies on immigration,” Stivers said on ABC News’s “This Week.”

  Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that he supports the president’s effort to pass conservative immigration policies but disagreed with his brinkmanship.

  “I don’t like playing shutdown politics. I don’t think it’d be helpful, so let’s try to avoid it,” Johnson said.

  Knowing these gutless wonders, I’d put the odds at about 80 percent that there will in fact be a government shutdown. Trump probably figures that Republican voter-suppression efforts will be enough to protect the GOP’s House and Senate majority anyway, so why not push it to the limit?

• Trump intensifies his hostility towards the press. If a dictator of a developing nation attempted to intimidate a newspaper publisher personally, we’d call that dictator a despot. What happens when the President of the United States apparently tries to do the same thing?
  

  President Trump on Sunday disclosed details of a private meeting he had with the publisher of The New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, and Mr. Sulzberger flatly disputed the president’s characterization of an exchange they had about threats to journalism.

  Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he and Mr. Sulzberger had discussed “the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

  In a five-paragraph statement issued two hours after the tweet, Mr. Sulzberger said he had accepted Mr. Trump’s invitation for the July 20 meeting mainly to raise his concerns about his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric.”

  “I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous,” said Mr. Sulzberger, who became publisher of The Times on Jan. 1.

  “I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people,’” Mr. Sulzberger continued. “I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.”

  This is particularly true overseas, Mr. Sulzberger said, where governments are using Mr. Trump’s words as a pretext to crack down on journalists. He said he warned the president that his attacks were “putting lives at risk” and “undermining the democratic ideals of our nation.”

  Mr. Trump, in his tweet, described the meeting with Mr. Sulzberger as “very good and interesting.” But in referring to the phrase “enemy of the people,” he did not make clear that he himself began using that label about the press during his first year in office.

Those who voted for Trump know that none of this nonsense helps to make America great again. False pride will prevent them from ever acknowledging that they goofed up on November 8, 2016–but the rest of the country can sense their shame. The only question that remains is this: of the 62 million who voted for Trump in 2016, how many will try to atone for their actions on November 6, 2018 and November 3, 2020?

The post Trump’s Triple Threat appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who once pretended to be outraged about the perceived perversity of Alabama US Senate candidate Roy Moore, made it clear today that he doesn’t think the alleged dirty old man is all that dirty:

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who has argued for weeks that Roy S. Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate, should leave the race, said on Sunday that he was “going to let the people of Alabama make the call.”

Asked during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” whether he thought Mr. Moore, who has been accused of preying on teenage girls, should be in the Senate, Mr. Connell said the decision should be left to the Dec. 12 special election.

“This election has been going on a long time,” Mr. McConnell said. “There has been a lot of discussion about it. They are going to make the decision a week from Tuesday.”

In the past, Mr. McConnell had said that he was looking at drafting a write-in candidate for the election, and that if Mr. Moore, a Republican, won the race, he would support a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the allegations against him.

But on Sunday, Mr. McConnell seemed to accept that Mr. Moore, who has denied the allegations, would not be stepping down with only days remaining before the vote.

It’s hard to believe that less than three years ago, McConnell was mourning the passing of Senator Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be elected to the United States Senate and one of the last actual moderate Republicans ever to serve in either the Senate or House of Representatives; Brooke, who fought in vain to stop the wingnutization of his party, is presumably turning over in his grave at the thought of Moore becoming Alabama’s next US Senator, now with McConnell’s subtle blessing.

Of course, it seems that Alabama Republicans don’t have any principles, either (and no, winning at all costs is not a principle):

A new CBS News poll finds 71 percent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Roy Moore are false, and those who believe this also overwhelmingly believe Democrats and the media are behind those allegations.

The poll found 92 percent of Republicans who don’t believe the allegations against Moore say the Democrats are behind the charges, and 88 percent say newspapers and the media are behind them.

Multiple women have come forward to accuse Moore of inappropriately pursuing or touching them when they were teenagers. The youngest woman to accuse Moore says she was 14 and he was 32 at the time.

The Senate contest looks to be highly dependent on turnout. Moore has a lead over Democrat Doug Jones, 49 percent to 43 percent, among the likely voters who are most apt to vote on Dec. 12. Among all registered voters, the contest is even. And nearly a quarter of voters still describe themselves as “maybe” or “probably” going to vote.

A majority of Alabama Republican voters (53 percent) say the allegations against Moore are a concern, but that other things matter more. One-third of Republicans say the allegations are not a concern to them.

The poll describes a picture of many Republican voters choosing based on other issues: Half of Moore’s supporters say they are backing him mainly because they want a senator who will cast conservative votes in the Senate, rather than because they think Moore is the best person for the job.

If Moore wins, it would be wrong to say Alabama will henceforth go down in history as the state where people will vote for the most repulsive person around so long as they have an (R) next to their name. Alabama already earned that designation in 1996, when the state elected Jeff Sessions to the US Senate ten years after he was deemed too bigoted to be a US District Court judge. Also, if Moore wins, Republicans will not expel him from the Senate. They will embrace him.

The post McConnell’s New Motto: The Moore, the Merrier appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Since Richard Nixon’s presidency, the right has been screaming that the mainstream media are biased in favor of liberals. They’re not. Just ask Bill Clinton or Al Gore, or for that matter the family of the late Ronald Reagan, who was given generally worshipful coverage both during and after his hard-right presidency. Still, the screeching has served a purpose. By complaining loudly and incessantly — by “working the refs,” as media critic Eric Alterman has put it — the right wing has been remarkably successful at intimidating the media into giving conservatives squishier, more respectful coverage than liberals get…

It is within that context that CBS’s blunders — worthy of a few firings in any case — are so much more toxic than they might be under other circumstances. After all, this isn’t Jack Kelley, a Christian conservative who made up war stories for USA Today. Nor is it Jayson Blair, who disgraced another great liberal bogeyman, the New York Times, but who demonstrated no particular ideological edge in doing so. It’s not even NBC’s Dateline blowing up General Motors trucks in order to show that, well, they blow up.

No, no, no. This is Dan Rather, the right wing’s Public Enemy Number One. Dan Rather, who mouthed off to Nixon when the then-president challenged him at a news conference. Who so infuriated George H.W. Bush with a string of Iran-contra questions that the then-vice-president later referred to him as a “bastard.”

It infuriates the right that Rather didn’t shrivel up and go away after his departure from CBS News. They cannot stand the fact that millions of Americans still have respect for him, and that his words still command attention. They certainly cannot stand his efforts to prod the mainstream press towards civic responsibility with regard to its coverage of the Trump administration.

Having been brutalized by right-wing ideologues for decades, Rather clearly understands that if mainstream-media entities bow down in subservience to such ideologues, and pulls punches in an effort to prove a negative (i.e., that these entities do not have a “liberal bias”), the Fourth Estate will have effectively abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities.

One can’t help wondering if Rather’s words have had a direct impact on current CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, who has drawn attention in recent months for seemingly refusing to play pattycake with the prevaricators in the White House. Rather’s words should have an impact on every working journalist and every news executive in this country.

Interestingly enough, in March 2006 Pelley himself acknowledged the problems that inevitably arise when mainstream-media entities prioritize balance over truth:

Pelley’s most recent report [on climate change], like his first, did not pause to acknowledge global warming [deniers], instead treating the existence of global warming as an established fact. I again asked him why. “If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel,” he asks, “am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?” He says his team tried hard to find a respected scientist who contradicted the prevailing opinion in the scientific community, but there was no one out there who fit that description. “This isn’t about politics or pseudo-science or conspiracy theory blogs,” he says. “This is about sound science.”

But doesn’t the fact that there are a lot of Americans who are skeptical of global warming – not well respected scientists, perhaps, but ordinary people watching the segment – warrant at least some recognition of the other side? “There becomes a point in journalism where striving for balance becomes irresponsible,” says Pelley.

Well said.

The Fourth Estate’s fear of being accused of having a “liberal bias” led the press to defer to the Bush Administration when it lied this country into war a decade ago. That same fear led the press to both abandon any serious scrutiny of Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. That same fear led the press to salute the Syria strike and embrace the forces of false balance. Rather is challenging mainstream-media entities to get over this irrational fear and pledge allegiance to the truth; if the press is not up to this challenge, our democracy will fall down.

The post A Lack of Courage: Why the Fourth Estate is Rather Intimidated by Trump appeared first on Washington Monthly.

We cannot gainsay the possibility that the strategy could work.

To reconfigure a famous line from Senator Marco Rubio, we may have to dispel with the notion that Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes to his efforts to change the subject and dampen public outrage about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. He may know exactly what he’s doing.

President Trump on Sunday called on the “fake news media” to turn its attention to questions of illegal government surveillance and ferreting out the leakers within his administration.

“The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING!” the president wrote Sunday morning on Twitter. “Find the leakers.”

Last month, Trump accused former president Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, a baseless claim that Trump and his team have continued to trumpet despite providing no corroborating evidence.

Trump aides’ attempts to buttress his wiretapping allegations have been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, a House Intelligence Committee investigation into both Russia’s apparent meddling in the 2016 election and Trump’s surveillance claims has become deeply politicized, with the committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), coming under scrutiny for his handling of the investigation.

Most recently, news emerged that least three senior White House officials were involved in the handling of intelligence information that was shared with Nunes and that the congressman argued showed that Trump campaign officials were caught up and, in some cases, unmasked in a broader surveillance of foreign nationals.

Trump and his enablers know that public outrage can be fleeting. They understand that there is a non-negligible likelihood that many Americans will become comfortably numb to Trump’s antics, turn their attention away from politics entirely, and move on to the same bread and circuses they indulged in during the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush years. All they have to do is wait for enough Americans to get bored, and they can go right back to doing their (and Putin’s) dirty work.

It’s easy to mock the voters who are still pledging allegiance to Trump even as he screws them, the voters who think his Twitter tirades are terrific. It’s easy to regard these voters as folks who are, to use the Washington Post ’s famous line about members of the religious right, “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

What about the rest of us?

Will the anti-Trump resistance grow or diminish as we head towards the summer? Eight years ago, the Tea Party gained momentum as the temperatures rose, sometimes to frightening levels. Will those opposed to Trump demonstrate similar resolve?

As the controversy over Russia’s interference in our election unfolds, pay attention to how many of our fellow Americans are still “woke” — and how many go right back to sleep. Trump and Putin understand that the odds of Americans remaining outraged over a sustained period of time are, frankly, not that high. Two decades ago, anti-Clinton Republicans asked, “Where is the outrage?” Depending on how things play out, anti-Trump Democrats may soon find themselves asking the same question.

The post Will Outrage Fatigue Allow Trump to Survive? appeared first on Washington Monthly.

It was quite sad to see Nye continue to peddle the bogus notion that with enough evidence, Donald Trump can change his mind about the importance of combating the climate crisis. Why do some pro-science people continue to hold on to this profoundly naive worldview? Donald Trump does not and will never care about the health of the world his youngest child will inherit. There is literally no amount of evidence that could convince Trump to change his mind. The economic benefits of reducing carbon pollution mean absolutely nothing to him. He is impervious to facts, impervious to logic, impervious to reality.

Nye promoted the Solutions Project, co-founded by Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University, which explains how America can be fully fossil-free by 2050. However, Nye failed to make the point that America will never be fossil-free so long as large segments of the American electorate continue to vote for those who think human-caused climate change is just a big hoax. Even if you could convince the folks who voted for Trump in 2016 that climate change is a pressing problem, they would still have to consider alternate political routes they next time they head to the ballot box–and it seems that many voters are too set in their right-wing ways to ever do so.

Sanders was OK, but he strangely failed to emphasize the importance of expanded mainstream media coverage of the climate crisis. Sanders and Nye faulted the role of the Fox News Channel in spreading climate disinformation, but the Vermont Senator–who has, in the past, called out the Fourth Estate for its refusal to pay proper attention to the threat of carbon pollution–did not reaffirm the need for mainstream-media entities to pick up where, for example, Mark Phillips of CBS News left off in terms of comprehensive coverage of the most important threat facing our world. It is long past time for the press, particularly broadcast and cable entities, to stop cowering under the table in fear of being called “liberal” for reporting scientific facts, which are not partisan.

Speaking of scientific facts that are not partisan, it was also interesting that neither Sanders nor Nye brought up the effort by veteran GOP operatives to compel the “Gas and Oil Party” (as Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey puts it) to support a federal carbon tax as the “market-based” alternative to the carbon regulations Trump intends to roll back. They could have noted the hypocrisy of former ExxonMobil CEO-turned-Secretary of State Rex Tillersonand current ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods both officially endorsing a carbon tax as the ideal way to address climate change, despite the fact that the fossil-fuel behemoth has undermined state-level efforts to price carbon. They could have also highlighted the courageous efforts of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to hold ExxonMobil accountable for its decades of deception on the climate crisis. So much more could have been done, so let’s hope Sanders’s next climate conversation on Facebook Live is a little more lively.

The post No Network Found: What Bernie and Bill Didn’t Discuss appeared first on Washington Monthly.

You know it’s only a matter of time, don’t you?

The news that NBCUniversal is bringing Fox News Channel refugees Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren on board means only one thing: the expedited elimination of any NBCUniversal media voice that displeases Republicans.

Just because Kelly had that little squabble with Donald Trump a while back doesn’t mean that, in her new position, Kelly will not show shameless bias towards the Republican worldview, the same shameless bias she exhibited during her ignoble tenure in the House that Rupert and Roger Built. (Note that Kelly claims she’s now on good terms with Trump.) Van Susteren may be viewed in some quarters as a figure who has exhibited less inanity than Sean Hannity, but there’s no question where her sympathies ultimately lie as well.

The hiring of Kelly and Van Susteren is a clear signal by NBCUniversal management that in their view, Democrats don’t watch their network and cable outlets, and that money and prestige can be found in flattering GOP power players, something these Fox figures are experts at. As progressive radio star Thom Hartmann has noted, over the past year or so NBC Universal’s cable-news channel, MSNBC, has been turning itself into what he calls the “cloth-coat Republican network”; with the hiring of Van Susteren at MSNBC, that cloth coat will be a deep, dark shade of red.

I wouldn’t bet against MSNBC hosts Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Joy Reid being purged from the network by year’s end. (I’m surprised that as of this writing, Trump has not yet attacked Maddow on Twitter for her outstanding coverage last night of the intelligence report on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to secure Trump’s success in last year’s presidential election, or Michael Moore’s call for an anti-Trump resistance on O’Donnell’s program.) Their accomplishments will not protect them: after all, it was six years ago this month that Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s franchise quarterback, was unceremoniously cut from the team after reportedly running afoul of management. Hayes, Maddow, O’Donnell and Reid simply don’t fit into NBCUniversal’s apparent game plan; when Maddow laments the fact that Republican main-eventers are reluctant to appear on her show, one can envision NBCUniversal execs saying, “Well, there’s one way to remedy that…”

Salon’s Heather Digby Parton recently noted that Hayes and Maddow “…take an adversarial position against right wing [nonsense]”; I would argue that it is precisely because they take an adversarial position against such nonsense that they may not be around much longer. When Maddow interviewed Van Susteren on Thursday, viewers witnessed a symbolic changing of the guard; though Maddow was gracious as always, and clearly has respect for Van Susteren, it was also unnerving to realize that Van Susteren will never scrutinize Trump and the Republican Party the way Maddow has.

Trump may profess to be angry with NBCUniversal’s news outlets now, but that anger will quickly subside, because with its recent hires, NBCUniversal has chosen sides. They will be sure not to offend King Donald or his party again anytime soon. To quote that old Waitresses song, these executives “know what guys want” on their cable and broadcast news: nothing but blonde, bland Republican fans.

I’ve noted previously the wisdom of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 suggestion that Democratic donors should invest in a cable network that does for the Democratic Party what Fox did for the GOP. NBCUniversal’s embrace of these de facto GOP operatives validates Sanders’ point–that if Democrats don’t tell their own stories, nobody will. We have seen US broadcast and cable media entities embrace madness before–let’s not forget that David Rhodes, the president of CBS News, is himself a Fox refugee–but never quite like this. US broadcast and cable media entities seem fixated on becoming another propaganda arm for the Republican Party. The question is: what the hell do Democrats plan to do about it?

The post A News Empire Bows to Trump and the GOP appeared first on Washington Monthly.