We are witnessing the silencing of American media
On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for the Washington Post. In a widely circulated email, he explained why he was leaving the Post:
Jeff Bezos and his new head of Opinion are taking the paper down a path I cannot follow, directed toward the relentless promotion of free markets and personal liberties … I have no idea to what extent this is driven by Mr Bezos' fear of what Donald Trump could do to his various business interests, most of which are more valuable to him than The Post.'
Well, I do have an idea. Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris. Amazon made a huge contribution to Trump's inauguration. And he stood in front of Trump at the president's swearing in.
Why? Because Bezos has founded a bunch of mega-corporations, including Amazon, that depend on Trump's goodwill and could be in deep trouble if Trump decided to retaliate against Bezos.
It's much the same story with Stephen Colbert, longtime host of CBS's The Late Show and the top-rated late-night talkshow host in the US.
On 14 July, Colbert openly criticized CBS's parent company, Paramount, for its $16m settlement with Trump over his frivolous lawsuit over the routine editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed gave her an unfair advantage in the 2024 election.
Said Colbert in his opening monologue:
As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company … I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's a big fat bribe. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.'
Three days later, on 17 July, Paramount pulled the plug on Colbert's show, eliciting from Trump a celebratory: 'I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.'
(A few days later, Colbert came out swinging, telling Trump to 'go fuck yourself', and joking that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.)
On Thursday, one week after Colbert's show was cancelled, Trump's Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount's sale to Skydance.
To clinch the deal, Skydance promised that it would eliminate all US-based diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Paramount and CBS and create a new ombudsman to field complaints of supposed bias in news coverage (presumably anything critical of Trump).
Let's be clear. Bezos has silenced any criticism of Trump on the editorial pages of the Washington Post because Bezos fears Trump's wrath.
CBS and its parent corporation, Paramount, have silenced criticism of Trump on Colbert's hugely popular late-night show because its top corporate brass fears Trump's wrath.
The new owner of CBS has agreed to some federal interference in the content of what it produces because he fears Trump's wrath.
It's the same with American universities, whose professors have often criticized Trump's illegal and unconstitutional actions and whose research has often yielded conclusions that contradict Trump's lies (such as that climate change is a 'hoax').
Columbia University and a handful of others have gone out of their way to 'cooperate' with the Trump regime in order to avoid Trump's wrath.
What does 'cooperation' entail? Silencing Trump's potential critics.
Columbia has just agreed to allow the regime to review its admissions and hiring practices in order to receive the federal research grants that the regime had held back.
Friends, this is how democracy dies.
The silencing is happening across America because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he's vindictive as hell, and because he's willing and able to use every department and agency of the federal government to punish any media corporations or universities that allow criticism of him.
Shame on any media outlet or university that allows Trump to silence it.
Trump is a dangerous despot. America needs its Eduardo Porters, Stephen Colberts, and all others in the media and in academia who have helped the nation understand just how truly dangerous Trump is.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His next book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, will be out on 5 August
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