Trump & The Press: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Trump & The Press: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

main story tonight, which concerns Trump’s relationship with the press. It’s always been antagonistic, and this week we got yet another reminder when he was asked a perfectly reasonable question about reports that he planned to accept a luxury jet from Qatar. What do you say to people who view that luxury jet as a personal gift to you? Why not leave it behind? You’re ABC fake news, right? Only only ABC. Well, a few of you would. Let me tell you, you should be embarrassed to asking that question. Uh, they’re giving us a free jet. It’s not a gift to me. It’s a gift to the Department of Defense. And you should know better because you’ve been embarrassed enough and so has your network. Your network is a disaster. ABC is a disaster. That is pretty hostile, though. I actually agree that ABC should be embarrassed. Just not for that entirely legitimate question, but for the fact that as of taping, they still haven’t renewed Dr. Odyssey for season 2. What the are you doing, ABC? It’s sexy er on a boat. It’s the pit with sharks. It’s got, and I’m not even going to try and beat their tagline on this, big deck energy. In its pilot episode alone, it featured a water slide injury, someone overdosing on shrimp, and this. What happened? It It broke. He’s in shock. What broke, Mr. Harrington? Is it a bone? Penile fracture. Are you not entertained? How is ABC renewing shows called The Rookie and Will Trent, whose premise is apparently just despite being dyslexic, he’s become a special agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. What? But they haven’t renewed the only show brave enough to answer the question, what if sick but boat? I I shouldn’t complain about the other shows. I shouldn’t care that a show called and about a rookie is returning for its premise defying eighth season. And I don’t begrudge any audience members for sticking around to find out if their favorite characters will or won’t trent. All I’m saying is ABC’s The View has been on since 1997 and Dr. Hotboat is still in limbo. You’re a disgrace ABC. Your network is a disaster. The problem is Trump clearly only likes when people are nice to him and the press by covering the things he says and does and the way he says and does them is in his opinion being mean. Back in his first campaign he attacked journalist constantly calling Jake Tapper fake tapper Maggie Haberman maggot Hagermanerman and Katy Tur little Katie which compared to the others is just lazy. Little Katie sounds like a doll from the 1970s that was discontinued for giving children lead poisoning. that in his second term, Trump’s administration’s escalated those attacks on the press. From making it easier to subpoena journalist records to detaining a Tus University student after she co-authored an op-ed on Gaza to Trump calling for Republicans to defund NPR and PBS, calling them radical left monsters that so badly hurt our country. And in March, he even went to the DOJ to issue this chilling announcement. I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6% 6% bad about me are political arms of the Democrat party and in my opinion they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal and it has to stop. It has to be illegal. Okay. What the press does has to be illegal. Is obviously extremely bad. But I also want to talk about that 97.6%. Real quick because I’m genuinely surprised that he knew that madeup number would sound more authentic if he added a decimal point. a decimal just feels more like a real number, even if it isn’t. If I tell you 20% of Taco Bell ground beef is actually horse, you’re like, “No way. Number’s too round.” But if I say 21.6% is horse, you’d be like, “He wouldn’t make up a number that specific.” Now, to be clear, I wouldn’t say either of those numbers, though, because we all know that the real number is significantly higher. But apparently, legally, I can’t say that, so I won’t. And unfortunately, even as Trump’s aggression has gone up, some owners of press outlets have gotten more submissive. During Trump’s first term, a lot of outlets positioned themselves as fierce watchd dogs for truth. The Washington Post, for instance, adopted the slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness.” But this time, even before the election, they seemed noticeably gentler. The Post owner, Jeff Bezos, killed the papers endorsement of Kla Harris. He also ordered that its op-ed page focus purely on the importance of personal liberties and free markets. Bezos has seemingly gone out of his way to cozy up to Trump with his company paying $40 million to license a documentary on Melania, the most Amazon has ever spent on a documentary. And even standing behind Trump at his inauguration. And come on, that’s not just bending the knee. That’s bending both knees, arching your back, and relaxing your holes. And Bezos isn’t the only media owner making notable concessions. The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times has reportedly asked the papers editorial board to quote take a break from writing about President-elect Donald Trump. Patrick Sunun Chong has reportedly required editors to send him the text of every editorial and the name of its writer before publishing. That is pretty chilly. And as for taking a break from writing about Trump, to be clear, I also don’t want to hear about him all the time. I don’t love that I’m talking about him right now, especially when I could be talking about the recent headline, “Ohio police find raccoon holding meth pipe during traffic stop,” which was already good enough until they made it even better, pointing out when an officer took the pipe away, the raccoon pulled out another. Pulled out another from where? You don’t think I want to talk about this raccoon with multiple method minutes? Of course I do. But I can’t because even as threats to the free press seem to be on the rise, resistance to them seems to be waning. And in some corners to a worrying extent. So given that tonight, let’s talk about Trump and the press. How he’s tried to reshape his coverage, the levels of power he’s using to threaten them, and how we should be responding. Let’s start with, if not the most important, the most visible sign that things have changed, the White House press corp. Back in February, the White House picked a high-profile fight with the Associated Press for the dumbest imaginable reason. You may remember after taking office, Trump announced that he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And while some outlets started using the new name, the AP didn’t, which led to them being banned from the Oval Office. Something press secretary Caroline Levit justified like this. If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. And I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is. Okay, to you maybe, but not to everyone. As the AP pointed out, it has clients all over the world, and lots of them still use the term the Gulf of Mexico. So, it’s not as simple as you’re making out there, especially because it can take time for people to adjust to a stupid name change. Sometimes, hypothetically, before we can even get used to one dumb name, some genius comes along and only makes it dumber. Then somehow it gets dumber still, and then against all the odds, somehow it becomes even worse before inexplicably going back to the stupid thing it was before. Incidentally, early this week, my parent company apparently said they cannot wait for my hot take on this whole rebrand, believing that whatever I say about this change was going to be pretty hot. So, please look me in the eyes when I say this. you. Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not going to do it if you want it. Unless, wait, hold on. Maybe you thought baiting me like that would be a good way to stop me from doing it. But on the other hand, how could a company be that smart when they’re the same people that came up with so many stupid names? Now, after a legal battle, the White House began allowing the AP back into the Oval Office. And as you just saw with that ABC reporter, other traditional outlets are still allowed access to the president primarily so that he can on them. But increasingly, he is managing to get the sickopantic questions he prefer. And even if you haven’t noticed that, he definitely has. What has made you and your team so effective in finding, locating, apprehending, and deporting these violent illegal migrants? I love this guy. I wish more people would ask questions like that. Do you think it shows just how out of touch they are with the American people? Um especially given that 79% according to a CBS poll approved of your of your I love this guy. How come when these Democrat elites want tariffs, everything’s hunky dory, but when President Trump wants tariffs, all hell breaks loose? Do you see this double standard? I love this guy. Whoever the hell that is. That’s really not. I appreciate that question. That is pretty humiliating. And not just because I love this guy, whoever the hell that is, is almost definitely how Donald Trump opened a toast at Eric’s wedding. But but it’s not a coincidence that Trump’s been getting more flattering questions because the White House has increasingly let farright news outlets and influencers into press events. A recent review of briefings found that four of the five reporters Levit called on most were from right-wing outlets. She’s also added a seat for new media, and the person in that seat is always called on first, meaning the press room now features figures like Cara Castanova, who works for Lindell TV, an internet news network bankrolled by the My Pillow Guy, who asks questions like this. Will you guys also consider uh releasing the president’s fitness plan? He actually looks healthier than ever before, healthier than he did eight years ago, and I’m sure everybody in this room could agree. Is he working out with Bobby Kennedy? And is he eating less McDonald’s? That is an actual question a White House reporter asked. And everything about that is unsettling. From the fact she was essentially asking the president’s looking hotter than ever, right? To the absolutely cursed smile of that ghostly twink presence of the business Malfoy hovering behind her. You can all see him too, right? Please tell me you can see him. And when she was asked to spell out her approach to journalism, it didn’t go great. You are a Trump fan, right? Yes, I’m definitely a supporter of President Trump. So, will you be able to hold them to account then? I would I will be able to hold 100% uh him to account. Uh you know, there’s I’m sure things that will happen that I disagree with and I have said plenty of times uh you know, on the record when I’ve disagreed with his Is there anything so far in this administration you’ve disagreed with? I I’m not going to let Let me put some thought into that for a second. Um, I’m just overwhelmed. Like just overwhelmed with how well I perceive things to be going. What? I’m just overwhelmed with how well I perceive things to be going. That sounds less like what a White House correspondent should be saying to a reporter and more like something you say to an acquaintance at coffee before crying in your car for an hour. And look, stocking the press room with suck-ups would be bad enough, but that’s just one of the ways the White House has found to thumb the scale of its coverage. Another has been attempting to weaponize the FCC. Historically, it’s at least pretended to be an independent commission, but that is now changing fast under its new chair, Brendan Carr. Trump elevated him to run the commission almost immediately after the election, and Carr made no secret of what he was going to do. I want to start by expressing my thanks and appreciation again to President Trump and to congratulate him again on his historic uh election victory. For me, as I go forward, the first thing is to get together with the president’s team and make sure that I 100% understand his agenda. After all, the it’s going to be his administration uh and it’s be his agenda that people should be pushing. Okay, but that’s not what your job is supposed to be. You never want to hear something as obsequous as that coming from someone in a role that’s supposed to be independent. For the same reason, you don’t want to see an NBA ref wearing one of the team’s uniforms or a Supreme Court justice flying an insurrection flag outside of his house. Hypothetically, of course, you understand. And Carr does seem deep in the tank for the president. Trump supporters have celebrated this image of him wearing a gold Trump pin. And after the Hollywood Reporter published an article titled, “Trump’s media pitbull is off the leash.” That included this horrifying picture of car as a pitbull, he tweeted it saying, “Woof woof.” One past FCC commissioner said, “I’m about as worried as I can be about the future of the FCC. I would say Carr is the most ideological chairman we’ve ever had and the most political.” And he’s wasted no time pursuing Trump’s agenda. His FC FCC is now investigating all the major broadcast outlets except for Fox. And Carl’s stewardship of the FCC has also been part of a new squeeze Trump’s been putting on the networks with the FCC on one side and lawsuits on the other. Here is how it works. The FCC has the ability to regulate the broadcast licenses of local TV and radio stations. The big networks each own a bunch of those. CBS, for instance, owns all of these. And while the FCC revoking a license is incredibly hard, what it can do is make it very hard for networks to sell those stations, which given the frequency of media mergers and acquisitions can be a real problem. So networks now have that threat hanging over them while at the same time Trump is applying legal pressure by filing lawsuits to put them on the defensive. It is pretty flagrant. Trump files a lawsuit demanding money. At the same time, his FCC starts making noises about plans to make that company’s life unpleasant. So, the networks settle in the hopes it’ll keep Trump happy and get everyone off their back. And maybe they think twice about the tone of their coverage in the future. Right now, CBS is caught in this exact squeeze, largely arising from a 60-minute segment that aired just before the election featuring an interview with Kla Harris, which Trump maintains was misleadingly edited. He has sued the network in a lawsuit First Amendment lawyers have called frivolous and dangerous and ridiculous junk and to understand just how true that is. It’s worth looking at the specifics here very basically. It involves Harris’s answer to a question about Gaza. And here is Trump’s version of what happened. They took Kamla’s answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview, which wasn’t a great answer, but it wasn’t like the first one. The first was grossly incompetent. It was weird. And that was fraud and election interference by their news magazine, a big part of CBS News. Okay, so Trump’s theory is that CBS secretly replaced Harris’s answer to a question to get her to win the presidency. And straight away complaining about that is a bit like accusing me of hiding the secrets of my skincare routine. One, I don’t have one. And two, even if I did, it doesn’t matter cuz it’s not like it worked, did it? But it’s worth knowing the only reason he’s aware of that weird answer is that it aired in a promo for that 60 Minutes interview on Face the Nation. So CBS aired it. They weren’t trying to hide anything. And if you’re curious, here are the two versions. Here is what aired on Face the Nation. It seems that uh Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening. Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of u many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. That is a pretty shitty answer. It’s like she’s trying to express a thought in English but with French grammar. It sounds like someone just shook her awake and yelled Israel at her. So Trump is not wrong. That was bad. But here’s the supposedly much better answer that 60 Minutes aired that night. It seems that uh Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end. I mean, I guess that sounds slightly more coherent, but they are both fundamentally celebrations of prepositional phrases and the passive voice. In both, she is talking like a high schooler trying to hit the word count. The letter of Scarlet, worn by Ha Prin in the novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850, symbolizes shame and punishment symbolically. And the underlying fact is the two answers seem to be broadly saying the same amount of absolute nothing about the same topic, which isn’t surprising because under pressure from the FCC, CBS actually released the full transcript of the interview. And it turns out this is her full answer to the question she was asked about Israel. This is what aired on Face the Nation. And this is what aired on 60 Minutes. So the network didn’t take her whole answer out and replace it with something from later in the interview as Trump claimed. They basically aired both halves of a single answer. And that sort of editing decision for time or clarity happens on TV all the time. As Seul pointed out, early last year, Fox actually massaged a Trump interview because in the version that they initially aired, this was the exchange. Would you declassify the Epstein files? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Okay, then. That is a firm unequivocal answer. And at that point, they cut away to the next question. But when they later add a longer clip from that interview, it became clear that his full answer played out a little differently. Would you declassify the Epstein files? Yeah. Yeah, I would. All right. Yes, I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don’t know if you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because there’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. Yeah. In one version, Trump’s answer was edited down and people who saw that missed out on the fuller context of watching his thought process go in real time from of course we should absolutely release the files. People deserve to know the truth to oh wait, you mean that Epstein to oh yeah, you know, you can’t believe everything that you read about people. The point is CBS engaged in a pretty standard practice of editing an interview for length and clarity. Nevertheless, Trump sued them for fraud, demanding $20 billion in damages, and CBS initially fought back, calling the claims completely without merit and saying that they intended to vigorously defend against the lawsuit, which makes sense, as legal experts have called it baseless and an easy victory for CBS. But here’s the thing. While that lawsuit was going on, the FCC began investigating the network over claims it engaged in news distortion with the interview. And that is a problem for CBS, especially as its parent company, Paramount, is currently in the middle of a massive merger with Sky Dance Media. And as I mentioned earlier, transferring its broadcast licenses will require FCC approval, and it can sit on that approval indefinitely. That may well be why Sher Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, has said she favors settling the case. She and Paramount have also apparently indicated 260 Minutes they were very interested to know the segments the show was going to be running on Trump for the rest of the season which feels like a big overstep. Bill Owens the head of 60 Minutes actually resigned in the wake of that saying it had become clear he would not be allowed to make independent decisions at the show. All of which makes it pretty gling that just a few years ago, Sher Redstone chaired an event for CPJ, a group that defends press freedom around the world and had the nerve to position herself as a defender of a free press. It is truly an honor to be here representing Paramont Global and the thousands of hardworking journalists at CBS News who fight every day for the freedom and integrity of the press. The honores in this room are living embodiment of these values. They remind us that press freedom is never guaranteed, that it must constantly be defended, and that it often comes at a significant cost, both personal and professional. Wow, powerful words there about the need to defend press freedom at any cost from someone who seemed to stop doing that as soon as there was a financial one to her. And that kind of undercuts the strength of her statement there. Imagine FDR saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself only to flip the out after he saw a bug.” It undermines his point. And maybe Redstone’s calculating that if she just gives Trump what he wants now, he’ll back down. But I seriously doubt that. Just look at what happened to ABC. They settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump in December over how George Stephanopoulos characterized the Eugene Carol verdict, paying $15 million to Trump’s private foundation for his presidential museum, despite experts saying ABC might well have won at trial. But since then, Car FCC has pushed ABC for more concessions like threatening its broadcast license over Disney’s DEI practices. And look, as bad as these examples are, you at least might already be aware of them. But there are fights happening at the local level that aren’t getting nearly the same degree of attention, but that are just as worrying. Take a look at what Cars FCC is doing to KCBS, a San Francisco radio station. Very basically, on the afternoon of January 26th, a local community group made this post to Facebook concerning ICE agents being spotted in the area. A city council member also posted about the ICE activities. Around 3:40 p.m., the community group posted that ICE had left. And around 2 hours after that, KCBS ran a story about it in the classic sedate tone of every radio news broadcast ever. San Jose Mayor Matt Mayan and Council member Peter Ortiz confirmed today that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are currently carrying out an operation on the east side of town. The country’s uh county’s response network says agents in San Jose were in unmarked vehicles including a black Dodge Durango, a gray Nissan Maxima and white Nissan truck. ICE agents were also reported outside a residence on South White and Tully roads and officers were reportedly at the target on King and Story roads. Okay, first that is a remarkably soothing voice for a news report describing something as alarming as ICE agents in unmarked vehicles. like listening to a YouTube video titled Lowfi Sounds of a Man Getting Balls by a Tiger to relax/study to. But crucially, that report’s also pretty basic. ICE was in the community. Community groups and government officials were talking about it and local news covered it. That radio station was actually one of several outlets that covered it around the same time. Here it is on the 6:00 news on NBC which actually showed images of the cars and agents in question. And here’s the same footage being aired on Telmundo. But it was the radio report that got the attention of a right-wing activist who pointed out that KCBS was owned by George Soros’s investment firm and claimed that it had put ICE agents at serious risk while an operation was ongoing, which it very much did not. Nevertheless, that complaint made its way to Brendan Carr, who later got himself in front of a camera, to say this. So what happened was you had ICE agents undercover doing operations in East San Jose in part of the town known for violent gang activity and you had this radio station broadcasting the live location identifying the unmarked vehicles that were they were in. So we have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations. What are you talking about? Covering stories like that is literally the whole point of local news radio. That and delivering the driest imaginable ad read for a local deck staining company. Now, legal scholars will tell you this FCC investigation is also meritless. As one first amendment expert put it, law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest. So, it comes to a if it comes to a court case and KCBS chooses to fight, it will almost certainly win. But it’s a little worrying that so far they haven’t openly defended their journalist who again did absolutely nothing wrong. And on one hand, I get it. Fighting the FCC costs money and opens the station up to risk when their license comes up again. But staying silent has real costs, too. As that First Amendment expert says, even if charges are never filed, people have to look over their shoulders to wonder, is the government going to come after me because I report something that the government doesn’t like me to say? Sadly, that is a reasonable question to ask. now much more reasonable, you could argue, than when’s the president’s workout DVD dropping? And this feels like where the biggest potential harm may be done because the government directly or indirectly is controlling criticism. And that is, to put it bluntly, authoritarianism. We’ve seen countries backslide and the press tends to be one of the first casualties. It happened under Victor Oban in Hungary and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. And those who’ve watched it happen in person will tell you this is where it starts. And this is also the one chance you get to stop it. Maria Reser, a journalist who was arrested in the Philippines for standing up to the Duterte regime. She ultimately won a Nobel Prize for doing that. And she said she sees parallels here with what happened there. And her warning to people like Sher Redstone is pretty stark. Don’t voluntarily give up your rights, right? I mean again in I’ll give you our example in the Philippines where uh the first the newspaper gave up the television station gave up largest it lost its franchise or license to operate and guess what it never regained it even after the time of Duterte. I guess what I’m saying is hold the line is the phrase we use because it’s connected to the rights that you deserve as a citizen. And if you do not hold the line at this crucial moment, this is the moment when you are strongest. It will only you will only get weaker over time. Exactly. Fundamental rights and freedoms are worth fighting for. And this is one of the fights that nerds who work in newsrooms can actually win, mostly because it doesn’t require any upper body strength. So what can we do? Well, obviously public support for organizations like the AP and 60 Minutes is important, but we also need to pay attention to what’s happening at places like KCBS. And I’d argue there’s a special obligation here to any outlets owned by extremely wealthy people like this lot to fight back. Don’t comply with Trump’s ridiculous demands prematurely. I know he and the FCC are making a lot of intimidating sounding threats and fighting them will undeniably take time, effort, and money. But I’d argue it is very much worth it, especially when the likeliest outcome is that you win definitively. If I may quote someone who I hope meant it when she said it, “Press freedom is never guaranteed. It must constantly be defended and that often comes at a significant cost. The point is if media owners enjoy the applause they get when they say things like that, now is the time to pay for it. Think think of it this way. A free press is really a lot like Dr. Odyssey. It’s it’s rare. It’s special. We’re very lucky to have it. And if we’re not extremely careful, we’re all going to miss it terribly when it’s gone.

John Oliver discusses how Donald Trump is attempting to reshape coverage of him in the press, how he’s using his power to threaten media outlets he doesn’t agree with, why this signals a slide toward authoritarianism for the U.S., and whether or not you guys can also see this twink we’re pretty sure is a ghost. Seriously. We are so scared.

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