Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost

Late night host Stephen Colbert attempted to interview Texas Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday. Instead of chatting for a few minutes with a little-known Texas state representative, Colbert ran into a legal wall: CBS lawyers asked the network to remove the interview after Trump’s FCC argued that late-night interviews with political candidates of one party but not the other violated federal regulations. The channel reportedly advised the host not to even discuss on air the fact that she had ended the interview.

Colbert was not amused. Not only did he talks about it on the air; he interviewed Talarico and posted it on YouTube, where, within two days, the clip had garnered some 7.8 million views.

A week ago, polls showed Rep. Jasmine Crockett leading Talarico by eight points. If Talarico eventually won his Texas primary, then went on to win the general election against the GOP’s favored candidate, far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—who avoided a likely conviction for securities fraud two years ago by taking a plea deal and agreeing to perform community service—he will have Trump’s anti-First Amendment FCC to thank for his meteoric rise to national prominence.

A poll conducted before Colbert’s interview about a hypothetical Talarico-Paxton matchup shows the race is a toss-up. And now CBS’s pandering to the Trump administration over the Colbert interview has given the Democrat a crucial publicity boost just as early voting for the March 3 primary begins. Indeed, many of the YouTube video’s more than 65,000 commenters specifically thanked the FCC for bringing the interview and the candidate to their attention.

“A threat to one of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights,” Talarico told Colbert, in response to the censorship attempts. The audience roared in approval. For the next 14 minutes, Talarico chained rhetorical home runs, denouncing the hypocrisies of Christian nationalism — “people baptize their follower and call it Christianity” — attacking the xenophobia of the MAGA movement and explaining that the real fight in America is “not the left versus the right; It’s up versus down.” This is the most succinct summary of the problem of oligarchy that I have heard.

Over the past few weeks, there has been something remarkably clumsy and stupid about the authoritarianism that Trump 2.0 is proposing. The ambition remains. The administration is still trying to restrict free speech, curb political participation, and take over election processes as the November vote approaches, but some of the administration’s enthusiasm and effectiveness that we saw last year appears to have at least temporarily dissipated.

Since the Department of Homeland Security announced the end of ICE’s intervention in Minneapolis, Stephen Miller, the most ardent defender of Trump’s might is righteous worldview, has remained remarkably silent. Greg Bovino, the public face of ICE wearing a Gestapo trench coat, has largely disappeared from view. (Bovino was last seen with drinking buddies unceremoniously kicked out of a Las Vegas Strip bar.)

Kristi Noem has also remained largely silent, although in her case she couldn’t go an entire week without doing something extremely stupid, totally offensive, cruel, or blatantly unconstitutional. At a news conference, she announced that the storm of federal investigations into allegations of voter fraud was intended to “make sure the right people vote and elect the right leaders to lead this country.” Apparently someone forgot to give him the memo about not saying really undemocratic things out loud. And later in the week, the Department of Homeland Security sent a memo announcing that refugees in the United States who had not obtained their green cards within a year of arriving would be subject to arrest and detention. As for Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, after the debacle of her congressional hearing, she apparently decided to hide under the tranche of Epstein documents which, drop by drop, leak after leak, corrode what remains of the integrity of the Justice Department.

Even Trump’s social media presence has become tired and formulaic. When Winter Olympics athlete Hunter Hess said that representing Trump’s United States “brings mixed emotions,” the narcissist-in-chief took the time to post on Truth Social: “US Olympic skier Hunter Hess, a real loser, says he’s not representing his country in the current Winter Olympics.” If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried to make the team, and it’s a shame he was on it. AMERICA STILL GREAT! »

The message was so boring that Hess didn’t even mention Trump in his response. “There are so many great things about America, but there are always things that could be better,” the athlete wrote. “One of the many things that makes this country so extraordinary is that we have the right and the freedom to highlight it.” Apparently, between his training sessions in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, Hess attended the high school civics class on the First Amendment that Team Trump all ignored.

Of course, by next week, the fading authoritarian regime may have pushed the United States into a forever, avoidable war with the Iranians, and with the help of Republican governors in key states like Texas and Florida, it may have stepped up its efforts to sabotage the midterm elections. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d say the odds were pretty high on both fronts. But given the horrors we are experiencing, I will accept small mercies where I can. For now, at least some of the air seems to have gone out of Trump — and when push comes to shove, a deflated and tired Trump, despite all the military hardware at his fingertips, is just a mean, talkative, increasingly confused old man.