It’s no surprise that the Trump administration is trying to control the media. To turn the US into the Fascist States of America, it’s not quite enough to dominate the courts, congress, and the executive branch; US fascists who are controlling that “fucking moron” and his sycophantic cabinet realize that the takeover won’t be complete until American media is degraded into something resembling China and Russia’s. That’s not so easy to accomplish because freedom of speech and freedom of the press have long been sacrosanct in American government; that also means it has a long history of being attacked by political assholes like Trump et al who try to control it. Even with the lack of complete control our current US fascists have over government now, they might just succeed.
Remember Jim Acosta? While he wasn’t Trump et al’s first victim, the attacks on the media certainly certainly have made big news for a while. What’s Jim doing now? Hopefully planning his revenge because, if we get enough respected journalists and reporters aboard who’ve become fascism’s victims here in the US, they can make life difficult for US fascists. In any case, I miss Jim in the White House press corps, now all too often reduced to Fox News and podcasters like Ms. Loomer (what an appropriate last name!).
But there’s more! The main stockholder of Paramount, the owner of CBS, wants to sell the company so she can become even filthier rich, so she fires the “Sixty Minutes” longtime producer and settles a lawsuit with Trump where he claimed that they favored Kamala Harris over Narcissus le Grand in an interview during the last campaign. This is an obvious bribe to get Trump off her back and complete the sale. Colbert’s late-night show has now received the same treatment: When blackmail works once, why not do it again? Fascists are just con men (and occasionally women!), especially Trump, who practices the art of the steal.
The Epstein case is more salacious and therefore has more legs in today’s fascist US. There’s the mystery surrounding the circumstances of sex trafficker’s death, of course: Was he silenced? Did powerful men, Prince Andrew’s buddies or otherwise, benefit from the alleged suicide? We’ll probably never know. But fascist media pricks, two of them leading the FBI, and scurrilous podcasters got appointed on the strength of their stirring up the MAGA faithful to demand release of the “Epstein files.” Huh? Do they even exist? What was in those binders AG Bondi and others were waving around? And were there others? Back in February she said the files were sitting on her desk, and now the WSJ, a venerable paper I respect not necessarily for its conservative editorial slant but for its economic news, has announced that the “fucking moron,” along with others, sent Epstein birthday wishes to Epstein long ago that included lewd drawings, one from Trump. And here we thought Trump’s dalliance with Stormy was over the top!
Of course, the motivation fascists like Trump et al have to control the media is simple: Such control is necessary to hide their peccadillos and crimes. It’s not good for their followers to think that they might be incorrigible dirty old men like Bill Clinton if not outright criminals like Bob Menendez until they take complete control of a country. A free press is one of the four pillars of democracies. America’s fascists might think they control three of them (they still survive even with all the cracks), but they won’t be satisfied…or safe!…until they control the fourth.