Trump has long been on the war path against talk shows because A) he can’t take a joke, B) he can’t handle the truth, and C) he’s bigly hurt that the smart, talented, cool kids don’t like him. He’s flat out said that mocking him is “probably illegal.” The only thing that bruises more easily than Trump’s hands is his ego. So the thin-skinned little dictator has tasked his FCC chair Brendan Carr with doing his worst to get all the TV meanies off the air. Carr was a central instigator in Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension last September, and he seemed to be quieter after Kimmel came through that ordeal victorious.
But I guess Carr’s New Year’s resolution was to get back on track with dismantling free speech, because he issued a letter last month that’s reverberating across talk shows. Historically, talk shows have been exempt from the equal time rule for political candidates, but in his letter, Carr stipulates that nope, that’s not gonna fly anymore, because reasons. And it looks like Carr settled on Texas Rep. James Talarico — who’s running for the Democratic Senate nomination — as a test subject, because interviews with Talarico on two shows from two separate networks have been put on notice recently. We talked earlier this week about Stephen Colbert not being allowed to broadcast his Talarico interview (he uploaded it to YouTube instead), and now Carr himself has confirmed that there’s “an enforcement action” pending for Talarico’s appearance on The View earlier this month.
“The FCC has an enforcement action underway on that,” Carr said when asked if the agency had opened a probe into the daytime series over potential violations of the “equal time” rule, because of an interview with politician James Talarico. “And we’re taking a look at it.”
Talarico, a Democratic candidate running to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate, appeared on the show earlier this month.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who will face Talarico in the Democratic primary, has also been a guest.
The View declined to comment; however, a network source pointed out that the talk show, which premiered in 1997, routinely hosts political leaders and candidates from across the political spectrum to discuss current events, including politics, and their differing viewpoints. The format is consistent with how the show has operated for years and what audiences expect and tune in for, the source said.
Late-night host Stephen Colbert also mentioned Talarico on Tuesday when he criticized The Late Show’s network, CBS, for allegedly prohibiting him from airing the interview in order to avoid triggering the equal time rule.
Network lawyers, he said, “told me unilaterally that I had to abide by the equal time rules, something I’ve never been asked to do for an interview in the 21 years of this job. That decision, I want to be clear, is their right, just like I have the right to talk about their decision on air.”
Colbert explained that talk shows have traditionally been exempt from the rule.
“We looked, and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career going back to the 1960s,” Colbert told his audience. “But on Jan. 21, we heard from FCC chairman Brendan Carr [who] issued a letter saying he was thinking about getting rid of that talk show exception. He’d not gotten rid of it yet, but CBS generously did it for him.”
…CBS said in a statement to PEOPLE that Colbert “was not prohibited by CBS” from airing the conversation with Talarico, but was “provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett.”
Colbert also noted on his show Tuesday that he’s had Crockett on twice.
[From Entertainment Weekly via Yahoo]
Subtlety is anathema to this administration, and their glaring tells in these latest machinations have been twofold. For one, the fact that it’s James Talarico interviews repeatedly getting dinged by the FCC. The second tell is the way they keep intentionally bringing up Rep. Jasmine Crockett (she’s running against Talarico in the Democratic primary) as an example of talk shows not giving equal time. They’re deliberately pitting the Democratic candidates against each other, which is a distraction from their real objective of giving Republicans more screen time. I hope that this means Republicans by and large are terrified about the midterms, but I despair that there’s no criminal low this administration won’t stoop to come November to negate the will of the electorate.
