Trump, Brendan Carr Threaten To Censor Some More Comedians For The Crime Of Comedy
Donald Trump and his earlobe nibbler (FCC boss Brendan Carr) are threatening to try and censor some more comedians after their efforts to cancel Jimmy Kimmel went so well (read: not well at all).
Over at the right wing white propaganda website formerly known as Twitter, Brendan Carr retweeted some whining from Donald Trump calling for the termination of late night comedian, Seth Meyers. In the tweet, Trump calls for NBC (which is hoping to gain Trump regulatory approval for an acquisition of Warner Brothers) to fire Meyers immediately for the criminal offense of... jokes:
That's Carr posting a screenshot of Donald Trump posting to Truth Social:
NBC's Seth Meyers is suffering from an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). He was viewed last night in an uncontrollable rage, likely due to the fact that his show" is a Ratings DISASTER. Aside from everything else, Meyers has no talent, and NBC should fire him, IMMEDIATELY!
Also, the weird thing is that Trump posted on November 15th that he viewed Meyers last night," which is impressive since Meyers' didn't even have a new show airing on the 14th.
Trump has made it clear that he'd prefer it if his billionaire friends the Ellisons (new owners of CBS and Paramount) offer the winning bid to buy Warner Brothers (and HBO and CNN) so they can further expand their right wing infotainment and propaganda safe space.
That means that to win DOJ and FCC approval of their own bid, Comcast/NBC Universal will need to kiss Donald Trump's ass with extra vigor, something that's apparently already started with a big fat Comcast donation to Donald Trump's extraction class corruption ballroom.
It's unlikely that NBC/Comcast executives would heed a call to fire Meyers to gain regulatory approval, but it's unsettling that in this age of immense corporate cowardice, you really can't be sure. Carr has certainly made it clear that he's more than willing to illegally abuse the FCC merger approval process to try and bully companies into kissing Donald Trump's ass. And Comcast is... Comcast.
So it's certainly possible that NBC executives could fire Seth Meyers in order to gain regulatory approval of Warner Brothers, but they, of course, won't admit there would be any connection between the two. But even then, it would be quite a gambit with Trump's popularity cratering.
You might recall that Trump and Carr worked with weak-kneed ABC executives and some right wing ABC affiliate companies to try and censor Jimmy Kimmel for some innocuous comments about a dead racist influencer. Ultimately, after massive public backlash, the right wingers got absolutely nothing they asked for. If anything, it pushed Kimmel's comedy to a broader audience, and cost the companies money.
So if they're keen on making Seth Meyers more popular than ever, they should definitely proceed.
The great irony is it's not like the comedians that most rile the president are even particularly edgy or boundary pushing in literally any way. Most of the stuff that deeply riles our toddler king is pretty basic observational late night comedy. Which makes you wonder how Trump would respond to modern U.S. comedy if it actually had some George Carlin, Richard Pryor, or Lenny Bruce style teeth.
Outside of a smattering of light criticism of hackish anti-woke" comedians by the likes of Anthony Jeselnik, Marc Maron, and the Elephant Graveyard guy, U.S. comedy - much like U.S. media more broadly - has been a feckless mess when it comes to challenging authoritarianism. Which is unfortunate given how even the lightest mainstream jokes about their competency clearly gets under their very thin skin.