Despite Trump shattering presidential norms and two first-term impeachments, critics say last week’s indictment of former FBI Director James Comey — which Trump publicly demanded on Truth Social — represents using the law to do the president’s bidding at a level Nixon could have only dreamed of.

For that, Trump owes a debt of gratitude to someone who worked for Nixon, the late Roger Ailes, who after serving as a White House advisor went on to create Trump’s most boisterous media shield, Fox News Channel.

Ailes saw Fox News as a way to level an unequal media playing field that was tilted against conservatives. In the Trump era, Fox has become a regular booster of his alternate version of reality, helping justify and explain his actions. It’s a symbiotic relationship that has facilitated Trump’s efforts, including his weaponization of the Justice Department to go after perceived enemies.

Before the election in October 2024, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story with Carl Bernstein, warned that Trump is “far worse than Richard Nixon.” To many political observers, Trump is proving that point in his second term, as he has brazenly called upon the DOJ to prosecute his enemies in public, sailing past Nixon’s schemes that were conducted under the veil of secrecy.

Indeed, while Nixon kept an “enemies list” and wanted to wield the levers of government “to screw our political enemies,” as White House counsel John Dean wrote in a 1971 memo, he wound up resigning after efforts to halt the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in were exposed.

By contrast, Trump has not only openly abused the Justice Department’s independence but has engaged in other activities that have enriched him and his family, such as their crypto investments, which have legal scholars shaking their heads, sounding alarms that in any other time would sound like hyperbole.

Appearing on MSNBC last week, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman told host Ari Melber, “I never expected after Watergate to see another situation like that again, but we have it now on steroids.”

Watching Trump weather various scandals, debate has persisted over whether Nixon might have survived Watergate had Fox News existed, which Ailes envisioned long before Rupert Murdoch gave him the resources to launch it in 1996.

Ailes and other Nixon aides hatched the plan for a Nixon-friendly TV network that would push pro-administration propaganda in 1970, writing in a memo at the time, “People are lazy. With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.”

Nixon liked the idea of disseminating what was described as “our own news,” but the plan didn’t come to fruition before Watergate triggered his downfall in 1974. More than two decades would pass before Fox News came into being the same year as MSNBC, expanding the cable news menu while funneling that space into ideological silos, leaving the category’s founder, CNN, stranded somewhere in the middle.

That polarization, which has come to include a chorus of Trump-defending voices on social media, has surely proved advantageous as the president seeks retribution against those he perceives as having crossed him — a strategy met with enthusiastic support from high-profile Fox hosts like Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld.

Their arguments boil down to the claim Trump’s opponents pursued “lawfare” against him through a series of lawsuits, investigations and criminal indictments, thus justifying whatever Trump does in retaliation. Other pesky details, like the fact a New York jury found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a hush-money scheme, are simply dismissed due to geography (New York, after all) or bias.

Positioning the discussion that way allows supporters to defend anything Trump or his inner circle do, as podcaster (and Fox alum) Megyn Kelly illustrated when bribery allegations surfaced against Trump border czar Tom Homan, employing the imperial “we” to tweet, “We do not care.” (The Homan story has another Nixonian precedent, since Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in the face of similar charges.)

During Trump’s first term, Dean contended Fox insulated the president in a manner that might have saved Nixon, telling Politico in 2018, “There’s more likelihood he might have survived if there’d been a Fox News.”

Others echoed the point, including Geraldo Rivera, who said to Hannity on his radio show, “Nixon never would have been forced to resign if you existed in your current state back in 1972, ’73, ’74.”

In some respects, that line of thinking has less to do with Trump than Republican lawmakers, who broke with Nixon when evidence of his efforts to obstruct justice became public via the Watergate tapes. Today, Fox and other conservative media provide a protective bubble that not only wards off negative reporting but helps enforce party loyalty, with those who don’t toe the pro-Trump line risking being labeled “RINOs” (that is, Republican In Name Only).

Although many have drawn Trump-Nixon parallels before, the Comey indictment has revived the conversation. The challenge for media raising the issue is that details surrounding Nixon aren’t fresh in people’s minds a half-century later, despite the many dramatic (and comedic) depictions of him and Watergate, including productions like “Gaslit” and “White House Plumbers” in the last few years.

While Nixon’s name is inextricably linked to political corruption, it’s worth recalling how Trump mirrors or surpasses him, including animosity toward the press, paranoia about enemies and a sense of victimhood, all qualities that Fox News’ biggest names help reinforce.

In a Salon column, Heather Digby Parton called the Trump-Nixon connections “uncanny,” writing, “Trump has gone farther than Nixon ever contemplated,” adding that unlike Republican lawmakers who turned against Nixon, in Trump’s case, “As his corruption and retribution have gone into overdrive, he maintains the full and enthusiastic support of his party.”

To the extent Democrats and historians have wondered whether GOP legislators might experience pangs of conscience or grow spines, it’s worth noting the media incentive structure is much different today. Republican lawmakers seeking re-election know the value of Trump’s support as well as cable-news hits or appearances on friendly podcasts; they understand what they have to say.

Ailes died in 2017, but he has cast a long shadow. And while he didn’t realize his grand plan in time to save Nixon, as Trump takes unprecedented steps to check names off his enemies list, Ailes’ vision for Fox News continues to play a major co-starring role in letting Trump be as bad as Nixon wanted to be.

The post Trump’s Weaponization of the DOJ Was Made Possible by Roger Ailes and Fox News appeared first on TheWrap.

Airing on NBC from 2004 to 2007, “To Catch a Predator” fueled the fear that anyone could be a sexual predator hiding in plain sight, with the show conducting elaborate sting operations that exposed men who thought they were chatting with minors to meet up for sex. When the men arrived, they instead came face to face with correspondent Chris Hansen, who pointedly interrogated them about their intentions before handing them over to police.

The show ran only a few years, but it has cast a long shadow. Indeed, watching the documentary, there’s a strong sense of how early apprehensions about what perils children face online tilled the ground for the QAnon hysteria, prompting a significant swath of the population to readily believe crazed conspiracies like “Pizzagate,” which falsely promoted the idea that a human-trafficking cult was operating out of a D.C. pizza parlor.

Those fears were subsequently stoked by Epstein, whose arrest on charges of sex trafficking of minors and subsequent suicide have stoked uncomfortable questions for President Trump’s Justice Department, which has sought to downplay an issue that Politico called “the horror story of our age,” reflecting deep-seated apprehensions about power and privilege in the 21st century.

As “Predators” — which is now playing in select theaters — makes clear, while it’s difficult to have even an ounce of sympathy toward the men involved, there’s nevertheless something unsettling about positioning those encounters as entertainment — capturing people at the moment they realize their lives are going to be irrevocably ruined.

Even some of the authorities interviewed for the documentary expressed their discomfort, with the benefit of hindsight, over the extent to which law enforcement allowed NBC and Hansen call the shots, which resulted in one suicide by a Texas assistant district attorney who shot himself as the police closed in on his house.

“Predators” also conveys just what a sensation the specials became, showing Hansen making the rounds of talk shows with Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Kimmel and Jay Leno.

As ethnographer Mark de Rond observes in the documentary, the question is how we “seem to enjoy watching these men be humiliated on TV. What you’re seeing is effectively someone else’s life end. And they realize it.”

Director David Osit acknowledges wrestling with those issues in making the film, as well as his personal experience in having been molested as a child, which he brings into the conversation.

“It started as a public-service announcement,” Osit told TheWrap of “To Catch a Predator,” offering a warning about “stranger danger” and what parents didn’t know about who might be lurking online.

What people really responded to, though, was “the takedown, the punishment, and that became the legacy that has become what people imitate” — reflecting what Osit called a mix of “schadenfreude and horror.”

Indeed, the strange echoes of “To Catch a Predator” include a modern wave of copycats, with aspiring social media stars conducting their own vigilante-style stings, chatting with men online, luring them to public places and then shaming or chasing them down.

Hansen, meanwhile, migrated the format to a new online true-crime venue, called TruBlu. In an interview with Osit, he confesses to his unease about those replicating the sting format “for clicks and profit,” but appears unperturbed about other questionable aspects of the program’s cultural impact.

“I understand people saying, ‘You push it too far,’” Hansen says. “’You take a man at his worst and you put him on television. You shame him.’ I’m OK with that. I’ll take that criticism.”

Although “To Catch a Predator” found plenty of willing police partners during its initial run, some interviewed in the documentary questioned the ethics of the authorities essentially functioning as tools of the show. That included wearing body cameras before they were commonly used to capture visceral footage the producers wanted.

Those elements didn’t sit well with former District Attorney John Roach, who recalled saying at the time, “We’re in the law-enforcement business, not show business.”

What “To Catch a Predator” did quite effectively, though, was blur those lines, tapping into the appetite for true crime and justice while employing the tropes of modern reality television, a genre where watching people suffer — especially if they appear to deserve it — has become a staple of the formula.

Unlike the vigilantes and copycats, Hansen tells Osit that what he’s doing has “a greater purpose,” which seems as much like a rationalization as a convincing argument.

If there’s a common thread running through all of this, Osit sees the popularity of true crime, the fascination with QAnon and the related focus on Epstein as cousins of “To Catch a Predator,” amid a time of anxiety, concerns about being victimized and a fractured social order.

“People feel like they need to form their own communities to feel safe,” he said. “And that’s what QAnon really was, and that’s what true crime is. That’s the connection.”

Still, de Rond seems to get to the heart of the matter when he suggests the goal of “To Catch a Predator” wasn’t to understand or address the underlying problem, but rather to entertain — fueled by a lack of empathy and the appeal of a world boiled down to good and evil.

“It’s a very surreal thing, to have a window into the end of someone’s life as they know it, and for that to be so public,” Osit said. “It also says something about how our evolution has created a desire for that kind of entertainment.”

From that perspective, the ripples from “To Catch a Predator” continue today, which explains why “Predators” feels so compelling. Because when it comes to pushing ethical boundaries “for clicks and profit,” as Hansen put it, more than 20 years later, that idea has plenty of company.

“Predators” premiered in New York on Sept. 19 and is gradually rolling out to additional cities.

The post ‘To Catch a Predator’ Casts a Long Shadow Through Our Culture and Politics appeared first on TheWrap.

Fox seemed to spend all day Wednesday trying to decide on a line of attack over Kimmel’s return to ABC. By the time the primetime hosts hit the stage that evening, they seemed to settle on three: That Kimmel never formally apologized; the left had turned him into a “First Amendment martyr,” as Fox’s Will Cain put it; and never mind him, Democrats were hypocrites for Biden administration policies and all the people they allowed to be canceled without offering a “free speech” defense at the time.

“He wasn’t sorry, so he didn’t say ‘I’m sorry,’” Fox’s Laura Ingraham offered with customary disdain, addressing Kimmel to add, “The government did not get you suspended.”

Perhaps the biggest proof that Kimmel offered a compelling argument is Fox News didn’t spend that much time discussing it — certainly, not compared to CNN and MSNBC. Barely any of the clips on Fox News’ YouTube channel from after Kimmel’s return are about the late night host, with the network opting instead to focus on Kamala Harris’ book tour. Indeed, there was an almost obligatory quality to the coverage, which mostly reinforced Kimmel’s argument that if you didn’t like him before the controversy, very little he could say that would change your mind.

Only a few Fox hosts or pundits, like Jesse Watters, sought to echo Trump’s fairness complaint, and the question of the late-night shows heavily tilting against Republicans in their guest lineups and the targets they choose to lampoon.

Others, like Sean Hannity, swung back to the contention this was really just a business decision by ABC, unrelated to pressure from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Hannity’s eager-to-please Fox News contributor, Joe Concha, went with the “Democrats as hypocrites” line, given that Disney had previously fired Roseanne Barr and “The Mandalorian” co-star Gina Carano in 2018 and 2021, respectively, for what were seen as offensive comments — the distinction being, just to close the loop, that the FCC played no role in those events.

All told, Kimmel received relatively little coverage on Fox, which has a habit, when a story isn’t particularly hospitable to President Trump, of simply changing the subject and zooming in on other matters.

Granted, part of that has to do with the vagaries of the turbo-charged Trump news cycle, and a story that felt more conducive to Fox’s habit of seizing on events to express outrage — in this case, a fatal shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, which Republican politicians and Fox hosts directly linked to Democratic rhetoric.

Then again, the sad truth about the U.S. right now is coverage of a horrific act of gun violence is often pushed off home pages by some new violent event. (On the left, there was a different distraction: The renewed threat of Trump using the Justice Department to target his political enemies, with reports of an indictment of former FBI director James Comey. That happened on Thursday.)

Kimmel’s non-apology is something Watters acknowledged as recognizing from experience — a notable aside, given that some have seized on a joke the Fox News host made this week about bombing the United Nations building as the kind of comment that would merit a response from the network. While Watters hasn’t addressed that, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade was forced to apologize after saying that homeless people should be given lethal injections.

The apology, or lack thereof, was also brought up on “Gutfeld!,” Fox’s late-night alternative, although host Greg Gutfeld’s vaguely coherent riff mostly kept coming back to mocking Kimmel for fighting back tears when he discussed Kirk’s death.

As for Kimmel, the second night of his show reflected a return to business as usual, which included skewering Trump for his low poll numbers, noting that Trump continued to threaten ABC and comparing the president to “an old-fashioned ‘80s movie-style bully.”

In a way, though, the most significant comments Wednesday might have come from an unexpected source in a different venue: Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who told CNN that in terms of Trump and Carr using the levers of government to exert leverage over late-night comics, “This isn’t an area that I think the FCC ought to be wandering into.”

Thune followed other GOP senators, as well as conservative podcasters like Joe Rogan, in expressing discomfort with Trump and Carr’s tactics in seeking to silence criticism.

Kimmel’s most significant line in his widely seen Tuesday monologue centered on the larger issues at play, saying, “This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

Despite the huge audience that greeted his return, the ABC affiliate groups that are still balking at airing the show means Kimmel is hardly out of the woods in keeping “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” alive and viable. Yet if the larger fight isn’t over, Fox News’ muted response suggests he clearly won this round.

The post How Well Did Jimmy Kimmel Do in His Return to TV? We Watched Fox News to Find Out appeared first on TheWrap.

Can Kimmel do that when he returns on Tuesday night in a way that will satisfy all of the interested parties, from the conservative-leaning station groups that pulled his show to the Trump-picked FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, who is now backpedaling away from the threat he leveled against it? Almost surely not.

But reinstating Kimmel comes after a stretch where even conservative voices, including Republican senators Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, expressed discomfort with the appearance of the government silencing a comedian because the president objected to his jokes, and after a parade of Hollywood heavyweights lashed out at Disney for caving to such pressure — seemingly putting its business interests ahead of the First Amendment.

The Kimmel dust-up, notably, comes amid a wave of efforts by Trump to silence critics, including 11-figure lawsuits against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which have faced tough sledding in the courts. Disney already capitulated once, with ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos apologizing, and the company paying $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump.

Trump officials, notably, also wrongly referred to Kimmel as having been “canceled,” which is tantamount to spiking the football before crossing the goal line.

Trump has done little to help those seeking to defend the charge that he’s silencing critics by insisting that the overwhelmingly negative tone of the late-night shows against him should somehow be “illegal” — a line of thought rooted in the old Fairness Doctrine, which stated that broadcasters must provide programming representative of diverse voices and opinions. That rule was eliminated during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, helping pave the way for Rush Limbaugh and the rise of conservative talk radio.

Nevertheless, the 1980s are by all accounts the era that still defines Trump’s view of network television. He still sees ABC, CBS and NBC (perhaps less Fox Broadcasting) as the titans of TV, never mind that those networks continue to shrink in importance and audience as we move further into the streaming age.

Far from the days when “The Tonight Show” dominated late-night under Johnny Carson, hosts like Kimmel and Stephen Colbert play to smaller niche audiences, which has both blunted their economic viability and allowed them to speak to narrower tastes. When Carson’s successor, Jay Leno, suggested that hosts were sacrificing viewers by skewing too far left, what he missed was that the current crop of hosts were forging a bond with a loyal core of viewers in a fragmented marketplace by taking an ideological side.

Given that, Kimmel isn’t likely to have some Trump-friendly epiphany as part of his comeback. The logical response would be to acknowledge, again, that he meant no disrespect or offense to the slain conservative advocate Charlie Kirk, without buckling in his appraisal of how Trump and his supporters had sought to politically exploit the situation, which represented the main thrust of his remarks.

Whether that will mollify Carr, or Nexstar, the first affiliate group that dumped the show, remains to be seen (Sinclair said later Monday that it wouldn’t be carrying the show as discussions with ABC continue). But the FCC chief made clear Monday that he intends to continue seeking to prod station owners to push back against content provided by networks. Such a move provides the FCC cover to police speech, with its regulatory power over mergers, primarily, hanging over the industry’s collective head.

Still, as The Atlantic’s David Frum noted, Trump’s access to “the apparatus of state repression” ran into howls not just from Hollywood stars but also Disney aficionados voting with their pocketbooks, canceling Disney World trips and Disney+ subscriptions.

As MSNBC’s Ari Melber noted, while late night represents a small part of the Disney empire, anger over the Kimmel suspension turned the response into a “massive, righteous, very clear backlash” that threatened to impact other parts of the studio.

It’s worth noting that while Disney insiders said the company was guided by “the right thing to do,” the deafening roar of that backlash surely played a part.

Disney CEO Bob Iger also found himself dragged into an unflattering spotlight, criticized by industry figures — including his predecessor, Michael Eisner — and publicly dressed down by HBO’s John Oliver, who offered helpful hints in how to push back against Trump and Carr’s “ridiculous demands” and triumph against a bully.

“I’m glad to see that Disney found its courage in the face of these threats from the government,” Democratic FCC commissioner Anna M. Gomez said on MSNBC Monday. “But we need to continue, all of us, to speak out and push back.”

Disney’s wider calculations regarding its best interests will surely be lost on those who prematurely crowed about Kimmel’s demise. Indeed, like clockwork, people who argued that Disney was simply making a “business decision” in yanking Kimmel were suddenly attacking the studio for making the business decision to bring him back.

In a particularly famous episode from the early days of television, Carson’s predecessor Jack Paar walked off “The Tonight Show” when the network censored a slightly off-color story that he was telling, and stayed away for the next three weeks. When he returned, Paar brought down the house by beginning his monologue with, “As I was saying …”

Thinking of Paar’s example, it’s hard to see what else Kimmel can do, after some sort of acknowledgement, but essentially pick up where he left off.

While bringing Kimmel back should take some heat off Disney from certain quarters, the real question is how long the studio and network will stand behind him, especially with so many bad-faith actors determined to put a comedian at the center of this ginned-up mini-drama.

The post Disney Wanted to Turn Down the Heat. Now It Needs Jimmy Kimmel to Put Out a Fire appeared first on TheWrap.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” a studio spokesperson said in a statement to TheWrap. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Which solution Disney and ABC ultimately go with upon Jimmy Kimmel’s return remains to be seen. Will the host clarify his Charlie Kirk remarks but refuse to apologize? Will he stand up and tell Trump and Carr to pound sand? Time will tell.

Read on for TheWrap’s full analysis of how Disney could continue to get out of this late-night fiasco.

ORIGINAL STORY: Since pulling “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air last week, the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, has experienced fierce blowback from politicians, pundits, subscribers and members of the entertainment community. That includes former CEO Michael Eisner, whose direct criticism of a lack of “leadership” at the company was a rare rebuke of his successor, Bob Iger.

Does the studio have any good options at this point? Perhaps not. A solution requires buy-in from Kimmel himself and there’s the problem that likely nothing will satisfy bad-faith actors in a scenario that would put the host back on the air.

On that score, President Trump prematurely gloated about Kimmel being cancelled and directly linked his removal not just to Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s murder but to what Trump perceives as treating him “unfairly,” First Amendment considerations be damned.

To the extent there’s a ray of light for Disney, conservative voices from podcast hosts like Ben Shapiro to Sen. Ted Cruz to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page see the optics of government intrusion in free speech as a bridge too far. Without defending Kimmel, they have decried Carr’s mob-like tactics, which could provide the studio some cover for a diplomatic resolution.

New Street Research policy analyst Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff, noted that while the FCC’s jawboning lacks genuine legal teeth, Carr could be playing a somewhat more subtle game, using the prospect of deregulating station ownership as a means of bending the parties toward Trump’s will.

“Carr is about to oversee an historic level of broadcast consolidation,” Levin wrote. “As we saw with his review of the Skydance/Paramount deal, these transactions provide Carr the leverage to obtain commitments to eliminate programming the President does not approve of and/or cause the hiring of Trump friendly persons to run news and other programming that touches on political issues.”

Given all of that, what can Disney do? Here are a few of the options, and the tradeoffs involved:

Kimmel clarifies his remarks, doesn’t apologize

Such a move might not satisfy the affiliate groups – certainly Sinclair, which is already well known for forcing conservative views on its stations – but it would defuse the situation to a degree, and restore the studio’s frayed bonds with Hollywood, which only seem to increase day by day with calls from creatives to boycott.

The question is how serious a financial hit ABC and “Kimmel Live!” would endure should Sinclair and Nexstar continue to balk at running the show without the apology that many on the right are demanding.

Try to compensate (that is, pay off) the affiliates in some other manner

ABC does have certain leverage in negotiating its affiliation agreements, and perhaps reducing or adjusting deals could be a sweetener to affiliates. But how much would the network have to give up in order to secure their allegiance going forward?

Move Kimmel to streaming

Moving Kimmel’s show to Disney+/Hulu would take the FCC out of the equation. As Levin noted, its jurisdiction doesn’t extend to that space. But it would also hasten the seemingly inevitable demise of linear television.

It’s also unclear if Kimmel would even want to continue the show on that platform, which is less accessible than broadcast TV. 

Pull the plug

Contrary to Trump’s assertion, Kimmel is not cancelled. Disney insiders keep telling TheWrap they are working hard to get the show back on the air.

But the economics of late-night television have become less hospitable, which CBS used as its rationale for dropping “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” as parent Paramount sought approval of its Skydance merger. 

The problem for ABC is that any attempt to hide behind that explanation has been blown up by the way the Kimmel situation has exploded into a national referendum on the First Amendment.

Furthermore, Trump has done little to hide his glee over the prospect of eradicating sources of news and entertainment he doesn’t like.

Stand up and tell Trump and Carr to pound sand

In other words, call their bluff. As The Bulwark’s Tim Miller observed on MSNBC Friday, “Too many people are folding to the fear.”  Instead, Miller said, “The right posture toward this administration’s aspiring authoritarianism is to stand up and say, ‘No. Do it. Try me.’”

That obviously comes with the risk that Trump will seek to respond in a punitive fashion. The president could torpedo Disney’s deal to trade 10% of ESPN to the NFL in exchange for its digital properties and access to more games, which requires federal approval, as well put roadblocks up for another pending agreement to merge Hulu + Live TV with Fubo. 

But that’s why Disney employs all those lawyers, and Trump has already suffered plenty of setbacks in the courts – the latest being the dismissal of his risible $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times.

The tide turns?

There have been cracks in the MAGA response to Kimmel, with some conservative voices warning about the long term consequences of the government silencing a late-night host. Cruz, for example, suggested that such policies could boomerang back and “end up bad for conservatives.” The Texas Republican also called Carr’s actions “dangerous” and “right out of ‘Goodfellas.’”

Other GOP senators, however, insisted the decision was Disney’s, downplaying Carr’s role in making it happen, despite evidence to the contrary, including Trump’s statements.

“Anyone blaming (or crediting) @BrendanCarrFCC for ABC’s business decision to suspend a dishonest, low-rated hack is wrong on the facts,” tweeted Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who went on to mischaracterize Kimmel’s monologue by adding, “The network made the common-sense BUSINESS DECISION that lying while mocking a horrific murder is bad for ratings.” 

The weekend yielded further evidence that the administration has been put on its back foot by the reaction, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News that the Kimmel decision “came from executives at ABC,” denying evidence of Carr’s involvement in the chain of events. (She also incorrectly said Kimmel was “fired.”)

Disney’s fundamental miscalculation, with the benefit of hindsight, was that it would somehow buy time by taking Kimmel off the air.

It’s too late to turn back the clock on that decision, and it’s possible the damage can’t be undone. Finding a way to close the book on Disney’s latest chapter likely won’t be the end of this story.

The post 5 Options for Disney to Get Out of the Jimmy Kimmel Fiasco appeared first on TheWrap.

What a difference 30 years, wholesale media consolidation and threats from a thin-skinned president with no regard for the First Amendment make.

As the president of ABC Entertainment and subsequently the ABC Broadcast Group in the ’90s, Iger scheduled “NYPD Blue,” whose boundary-pushing content prompted a revolt by 57 ABC stations that initially refused to air it; and “Ellen,” which generated controversy over star Ellen DeGeneres coming out as a lesbian, both personally and as part of the show on its famous “The Puppy Episode.” One station, in Alabama, balked at airing that.

Now the head of Walt Disney Co., which he has guided for more than 20 years, Iger is dealing with another crisis while playing a much weaker hand. The public relations disaster began Wednesday, when ABC “indefinitely” preempted “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after a pressure campaign launched by the Trump administration that prompted two major affiliate owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, to announce they wouldn’t air the late night program.

Having already blinked, figuring out how ABC might bring Kimmel back falls squarely on Disney’s executive suite, which is being understandably buffeted by criticism from all sides, from politicians and pundits to Kimmel’s fellow stand-up comedians, along with the Writers Guild of America and other Hollywood groups.

For Iger, 74, this challenge has emerged at the twilight of his career and in the process of choosing a successor, although the tumult surrounding Disney might make one wonder why his top lieutenants would be lining up for such a thankless job, the perks and pay notwithstanding.

Notably, Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden, who oversees ABC, is one of Iger’s potential replacements, a decision the company has stated will come in early 2026.

Disney didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While running a studio has never been easy, the degree of difficulty has been ratcheted up during Trump’s second term, thanks in part to his relentless attacks on media and the willingness of his handpicked Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, to do his bidding.

The regulatory process governing broadcast television has created additional pressure points.

Specifically, TV station owner Nexstar announced a $6.2 billion merger with another major station group, Tegna, in August, potentially creating a giant that would control 265 stations reaching 132 of the nation’s 210 TV markets. But approving such a deal would require that the FCC relax its existing cap on the percentage of the country a single owner can reach.

Those regulatory objectives have made both Nexstar and Sinclair especially vulnerable to the threats that Carr has directed at broadcasters, which critics see as little more than an attempt to silence voices — including comedians — that speak ill of Trump.

FCC commissioner Anna M. Gomez summed up how antithetical that is to both First Amendment values and the commission’s mandate, stating, “This FCC does not have the authority, the ability or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes.”

Then again, the professed outrage over Kimmel’s monologue regarding the killer of activist Charlie Kirk appears to many like a transparent means of achieving those ends. Trump himself has seemingly given that game away on multiple occasions, including his statements to reporters Thursday, in which he complained again about how unfair the late-night hosts have been to him, while confusing where broadcasting licenses reside.

As for the FCC guidelines, and the regulatory changes the station groups seek, Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of the free-speech advocacy group Free Press, posted on Bluesky that the fact that the media system has “become so concentrated that it cannot stand up to authoritarianism is a policy failure.”

Media companies, including Disney, have thus far shown themselves willing to settle lawsuits filed by Trump in the vain hope it would make such concerns go away — a posture that looks increasingly naive with each new concession.

Disney already agreed to pay $15 million in December after Trump brought a lawsuit against ABC News regarding the language that anchor George Stephanopoulos used in describing the defamation verdict won against Trump by E. Jean Carroll.

Yet if corporate leaders like Iger hoped that payoffs would mollify Trump, or at least keep him at bay, they have rather appeared to embolden him. Just this week, Trump referenced the ABC settlement as he raged at ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, indicating that he might “go after” him as well. (As a footnote it’s worth noting Iger’s wife, Willow Bay, is an ABC News alum and the dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.) 

Speaking at The Atlantic Festival Thursday, late night icon David Letterman summed up, more than anything, Trump’s underlying pettiness, saying, “The institution of the president of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show.”

For Iger, who started his career as a TV weatherman at an ABC affiliate in Ithaca, New York, and worked at multiple ABC divisions as he was groomed for the network’s top job, this latest and perhaps last major controversy reflects how dramatically the world has evolved.

“NYPD Blue” made its debut in 1993, overcoming the distribution handicap caused by those rogue affiliates to become a major ratings hit, win over advertisers, win Emmys and run 11 seasons.

With Capital Cities’ support, Iger endured the campaign mounted against the show by the Christian conservative group the American Family Association, and was rewarded with a major hit. ABC did the same with “Ellen,” whose coming-out episode drew more than 40 million viewers, although ratings faded thereafter and the show was canceled.

Much has changed since then. ABC is now part of Disney, a much bigger company with a vast assortment of business and regulatory interests to consider, fueling the common complaint that “corporate media” has revealed its weakness by knuckling under to Trump’s mob-like tactics. Those vulnerabilities also include the possibility of people expressing their displeasure over the Kimmel decision by skipping trips to Disney World and canceling Disney+ subscriptions, or creative talent choosing to take their services elsewhere.

Disney, notably, is exposed on that level because the company has grown vastly larger under Iger, who spearheaded the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, as well as the deal that brought Fox’s entertainment assets into Mickey Mouse’s clubhouse.

In his memoir, “NYPD Blue” co-creator, the late Steven Bochco, recalled that Iger had to go to the mat to convince his boss Dan Burke, the CEO of ABC’s then-parent Capital Cities, to take such a major gamble, quoting Burke as telling Iger, “You’d better be right. Because if you’re wrong, my skirts won’t be big enough for you to hide behind.”

These days, Iger doesn’t have any skirts to hide behind except his own. But the choices Disney makes now could create lingering ripples for his successor, in addition to potentially adding asterisks to Iger’s storied legacy.

The post Bob Iger Faced Down Affiliate Revolts Before. The Game Has Changed Under Trump | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

While those politics have long been clear, they land differently and more pointedly during this second Trump administration, as the spinoff series “Gen V” premieres its second run on Amazon’s Prime Video on Wednesday in advance of the flagship show’s final season next year.

Perhaps the most jarring part of watching “Gen V” now is that despite its over-the-top bursts of gore and kinky sex, the world of “The Boys” feels less outlandish and cartoonish with each passing season. While it’s possible to enjoy its sly satire of superheroes (see “The Boys’” take on Batman, for starters), it’s increasingly difficult to divorce the series from a reality whose absurdities appear to be rising to meet the show on its terms.

“The Boys” and “Gen V” aren’t the only shows to sound the warnings about our dystopian present through science fiction. “Alien: Earth” has plucked at similar threads, while “The Handmaid’s Tale” struck a nerve with its vision of eroding women’s and reproductive rights, only to see the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the right to an abortion bring that closer to reality. Emmy nominee “Severance” incorporates growing unease about technology, large corporations and how far they’ll go to achieve what they consider an acceptable means of work-life balance.

“The Boys” and “Gen V” nevertheless stand apart by so directly leaning into politics within what is, at its core, an anti-superhero show, taking Americans to task for gullibly believing lies from a “hero” with a well-edited narrative.

There is, admittedly, more than a little irony in a show that so searingly indicts President Donald Trump, his MAGA minions, rampant corporate greed and media manipulation playing on Amazon, a company whose billionaire founder Jeff Bezos has joined fellow members of the oligarch class in cozying up to the president.

Chalk that up to the perverse glee in Hollywood when it comes to biting the hands that feed you, with “Gen V” not pulling any punches with its image of an America sliding into authoritarianism, under the thumb of massive corporations and a populace beguiled by evil that hides in plain sight.

The most intriguing wrinkle in the spinoff emanates from its demographic skew, focusing on college students at Godolkin University, a training ground for future superheroes that goes by the appropriate nickname “God U.”

While the student body at God U engages in the usual college hijinks — pushing standards on sex and violence to beyond-R-rated extremes — they also speak the language of youthful influencers, urging their followers to “smash the like button” (or in the case of a reptilian character, “lick” it) and to Make America Super Again.

“Gen V” operates on a parallel track to “The Boys,” which concluded its season last year with the Superman-like Homelander seizing control of the government. As series creator Eric Kripke noted in a 2022 interview, and has reiterated since, Homelander has “always been a Trump analogue for me,” reflecting the disturbing trend that “the more awful public figures act, the more fans they seem to be getting.”

Like “The Boys,” “Gen V” doesn’t bother with much subtlety in evoking those real-world echoes. The superhero/right-wing media host Firecracker derides the “woke” agenda, while seeking to tar political opponents as pedophiles and labeling “supes” who would stand against the excesses of their kind as “race traitors.” Political enemies are demonized and falsely accused of violence.

While obviously exaggerated, in such sequences it’s hard not to hear echoes of those seeking to make political hay out of tragedies and crises, underscored by some of the incendiary rhetoric regarding conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. In addition to pundits, that’s included Trump and top advisor Stephen Miller laying blame on the “radical left” before all the details emerged.

“The Boys” universe also features a very particular kind of insidious corporation in Vought International, which creates and controls superheroes while marketing them across its media holdings, which include everything from movies to a very Fox-like conservative TV network, all blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

It’s easy to get carried away finding messages within popular entertainment, and as one of Amazon’s most popular and valuable franchises — Season 4 of “The Boys” cracked 1 billion minutes viewed, according to Nielsen’s streaming charts, ranking first among Prime Video series — the show works strictly as a commercial proposition. Small wonder another spinoff, the prequel “Vought Rising,” is also in the works.

Nor should it be lost that “The Boys” made its debut in 2019, introducing its jaundiced universe a few months after “Avengers: Endgame” closed that chapter of superhero-movie box-office dominance. Perhaps appropriately, the apex of the superhero experience on the big screen paved the way for a darker view of caped crusaders that feels very much in step with the cynical nature of the times.

According to Amazon, viewership of “The Boys” has grown each season, with more than 55 million viewers worldwide for the fourth season, tops among the streamer’s series. More than half of that audience comes from outside the U.S.

Still, if “The Boys” and “Gen V” have leaned into politics, they have been abetted by the extent to which politics has veered toward their unnerving reality.

While that might represent a distraction for those watching these shows seeking a sense of much-needed escapism, for those who don’t mind encountering a little political messaging with their superhero action, sex and violence, it’s one more reason to lick the like button.

“Gen V” Season 2 premieres Sept. 17 on Amazon’s Prime Video. (Disclosure: Lowry’s wife works for a unit of Amazon.)

The post ‘Gen V’ Season 2 Hits Harder Under Trump 2.0 appeared first on TheWrap.

Unfortunately, racing through the speeches came at too high a cost for the show itself, one that played out in uneven pacing and awkward moments strewn throughout.

Not that you can entirely blame the producers for trying something a little bit different. Unlike the Oscars, the Television Academy must adhere pretty rigidly to its three-hour broadcast window, which makes finishing on time more of a priority.

The gimmick to run a tighter ship sounded funny when Bargatze laid it out: The host announced a $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which would rise or fall depending on how well people adhered to the 45-second limit on acceptance speeches.

It was at first blush inspired, hilarious and more than a little cruel, representing a novel twist on the whole “play-off music” issue that bigger stars tend to ignore.

Hollywood egos versus charity? Who would win?

In practice, though, even if it seemed likely the charity would be made whole before the night was over (as it was, to the tune of $350,000), the pressure to rush off winners robbed the show of much of its spontaneity, as the gag worked against Emmy recipients addressing issues that might resonate beyond the room.

The result was an initially fast-paced ceremony — until things ground to a halt in the final hour — but an otherwise bland affair, which, one suspects, is just the way the Television Academy wanted it.

The major outlier in that regard was “Hacks'” star Hannah Einbinder, who said she would “pay the difference” to the Boys & Girls Club and used her time to say “F–k ICE” (although that was mostly obscured by the censor’s button) and “Free Palestine,” to what sounded like a roar of approval from the crowd.

The show did derive intermittent emotion from an abundance of first-time winners, including “Severance’s” Britt Lower and Tramell Tillman, Seth Rogen (“The Studio”), Jeff Hiller (“Somebody Somewhere”), Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty (“Adolescence”), Cristin Milioti (“The Penguin”), and “The Pitt’s” Katherine LaNasa.

While the producers don’t control who wins, they benefited from the spectacle of seeing some lesser-known actors triumph in categories they shared with superstars, none bigger than an exuberant Hiller taking home supporting actor over Harrison Ford.

Granted, there were nice moments, such as Ray Romano and Brad Garrett riffing together near the end, or Owen Cooper, the 15-year-old star of “Adolescence,” getting his supporting-actor honor. But that was a speech to bask in, not one for watching the timer.

So while people discussed politics on the red carpet, the telecast felt largely stripped of meatier moments. And there was the disconnect of presenters taking all the time they wanted, then chasing off the winners who followed.

Even a few highlights that might have lent themselves to more pointed statements stayed in relatively benign territory. After opening with a standing ovation for Stephen Colbert, the outgoing CBS late-night host merely joked about his future employment prospects, handing a resume to Harrison Ford.

Later winning for “The Late Show,” Colbert delivered an emotional rallying cry for America, noting that his program had gone from one about love to loss. Notably, of the 26 competitive categories handed out Sunday, the two that went to broadcasters were both for late-night franchises (the other being “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary), while streaming claimed 21 of the statuettes.

Improbably, one of the few political statements came from TV Academy president Cris Abrego, who referenced the group’s pre-broadcast honor to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the need to champion inclusion and “keep telling stories” that will bring people together.

The last hour also saw the presentation of the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award to Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen for their philanthropic endeavors, allowing them time to offer a heartfelt speech that seemed more welcome juxtaposed with the hurried ones that preceded it.

As for the host, Bargatze had a relatively limited role beyond an opening sketch about the creation of television and servicing the acceptance-speech bit. His contribution turned out to be another victim of the idea that dominated the evening.

“What a night,” Bargatze muttered near the end.

It’s worth noting the Emmy ceremony rotates (for now) among the four major broadcast networks, but its TV-rights future after next year remains up in the air.

While poking fun at award shows on an awards show certainly has its place, appearing to make an award show aimed at people who dislike awards shows doesn’t. And in terms of fixing that, the TV Academy’s clock should start ticking now.

The post Emmys Review: Speeding Up the Acceptance Speeches Came at a Too-High Cost appeared first on TheWrap.

As someone who has watched too many award shows — and has to for a living — here’s a simple suggestion: Embrace political speeches and encourage recipients to articulate strongly held views.

That likely sounds counterintuitive, especially with so many conservative voices just waiting to pounce on Hollywood liberals, charging that they’re out of touch and elitist and hate Donald Trump, blah blah blah. Why potentially alienate more viewers or rile up those already waiting to be outraged?

The toxic political environment has surely played a role in celebrities shying away from political speech, anticipating volleys of online vitriol or targeting by President Trump’s social media account. A wave of political violence, the latest being the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has added to the broader sense of unease, making the prospect of backlash seemingly even more potent, as Trump and allies like advisor Stephen Miller seek to clamp down on dissent by intimidating and silencing critics.

Given all that, turning a career-defining moment into a call to action might sound like a lot to ask. Yet regardless of the politics espoused or the cause promoted, those speeches generally prove more memorable because they’re about something, delivered with passion and a point of view that goes beyond the customary, “I’d like to thank my agent and co-stars.” And if award shows need anything right now, it’s a sense of spontaneity — a must-watch factor — to overcome all the well-documented forces dragging down linear TV ratings in general.

Conservatives will argue that like-minded viewers stay away because some outspoken liberal deeply wounded them — or at least hurt their surprisingly frail feelings — by talking about the environment, women’s rights or badmouthing Trump.

The president himself picked up that theme last week, after West Point canceled an event that would have honored Tom Hanks. Trump posted, nonsensically, that award shows should do away with “woke” recipients and “watch their DEAD RATINGS SURGE!”

Such gripes conveniently ignore the challenges plaguing the entertainment industry broadly and award shows in particular: a more fragmented audience, with less rooting interest in series and movies many haven’t bothered to see. Plus the knowledge that people can see show clips in near-real time on social media, without having to sit through three hours of presenter blather and commercial breaks.

With those elements diluting the live experience, it’s only genuine, from-the-heart moments that tend to stand out. And aside from the burst of emotion around claiming a major award — Olivia Colman’s hilarious speech after winning for “The Favourite” as one politics-free example of getting by on unbridled charm — recipients have the best chance of connecting on a deeper level by daring to discuss something bigger than themselves.

Admittedly, people still watch award shows for various reasons, many having nothing to do with who wins. That’s definitely the case for performance-driven showcases like the Grammys or Tonys, but even the Oscars and Emmys can deliver showbiz flair if they get the alchemy right.

Seeking gifts from “the award-show gods”

Among more traditional award-show viewers, though, what tends to make a show memorable are things that can’t be planned — what Gil Cates, the late producer of many Oscar telecasts, referred to as the “award-show gods.”

Plan all the presenter banter, reunions, skits and honorary awards that you like, but anyone who has watched award shows knows the limits of those scripted sequences.

Invariably, moments that have withstood the test of time don’t come from a teleprompter, from Marlon Brando dispatching Sacheen Littlefeather to accept his Oscar for “The Godfather” to Halle Berry’s tear-filled speech after making history for “Monster’s Ball.” Ditto for documentarian Michael Moore’s indictment of the Iraq war in 2003, Patricia Arquette’s plea for women’s rights (and equal pay) at the 2015 Oscars, Andrew Garfield embracing LGBTQ rights at the 2018 Tonys or Meryl Streep’s 2017 Golden Globes speech clearly aimed at Trump’s hostility toward immigrants, without ever naming him.

Who won best picture at that show? Who knows? But Arquette’s speech, with Streep enthusiastically pointing at her, prompted an enduring meme, while Streep’s comments echoed for days — and drew an inevitable “Overrated” rebuke from Trump.

Award-show ratings have remained on a downward arc, which reflects the gravity dragging at all of linear television, as well as the lingering after-effects of COVID and strike-disrupted years.

While last year’s Emmys rebounded to almost 6.9 million viewers, that followed two years of historic lows — the audience first slipped below 10 million viewers in 2019 — indicating that there’s relatively little to lose. And with its existing TV deal, in which the awards rotate among the four major broadcast networks, due to expire after next year’s ceremony, the Television Academy has a heightened need to present a telecast people will watch and someone will pay to carry.

Given the whirlwind of social media, taking a stand does invite certain headaches, but there’s plenty of talent with zero F’s to give — what are you going to do, cancel Helen Mirren or Harrison Ford? And besides, it only takes a few key moments, amid the obligatory business that needs to get done, to punctuate these ceremonies.

In an appearance on MSNBC in August, Henry Winkler addressed the issue of having the courage to speak out on matters of importance to him by saying, “I am an American, I’m a man, and then I’m a professional. And people still say to me on Twitter, ‘Stay in your lane.’ And my lane is being a man in America. My profession is being an actor.”

While it would be naive to ignore that choosing a lane involves risks, you often have to take chances to make noise. And that’s what award shows must do, ultimately, if they still hope to create the feeling they’re worth watching.

So bring on the politics. Sure, you’ll offend someone. But honestly, if they’re that sensitive, most of them weren’t going to watch anyway.

The post The Emmys Need a Jolt. Start by Bringing Politics Back to the Speeches appeared first on TheWrap.

Before the day’s end, the news network severed ties with the contributor.

Dowd wasn’t the only person to speak prematurely in opining about the Kirk story, but his firing speaks volumes about the pressure in TV news — particularly in breaking news situations — to weigh in with hot takes, and why it’s OK, even prudent, to simply shut up.

Instead, the Turning Point USA founder’s death, which was confirmed after Dowd weighed in, provided another stark demonstration of the thirst for instant gratification that has overwhelmed our politics and punditry, with people speaking before all the facts are in and sorting out the consequences later.

Those early moments of any crisis have also unfortunately become a time of political point-scoring, with voices including President Trump using their megaphones to baselessly accuse political opponents of creating an environment that prompted the latest act of violence, before knowing who pulled the trigger much less why.

As The Atlantic columnist Jonathan Chait noted on X, while every political movement condemns violence by opponents, “The only real test is whether you also oppose political violence by your allies. This is a test Trump has repeatedly failed.”

In some respects, the toxic dynamics of cable news are nothing new. Networks have endless hours to fill, especially in breaking news scenarios. That sense of urgency also plays to the strength of social media, where those seeking attention can wade in unburdened by delay, filters or, among many of the worst offenders, any apparent conscience or memory.

The cable news networks do their hosts and guests no favors by placing them in a position so fraught with peril, although they still manage to act shocked when someone gets out too far over their skis.

Filling time without really saying anything represents its own sort of special skill. As anyone who has ever appeared on live TV can attest, the last thing an interview subject wants to say is “I don’t know” or “I don’t have any opinion about that.” For those seeking to burnish their personal brands, axioms like “Don’t speak ill of the dead” or “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” also get sorely tested.

Because the Internet is forever, illustrations of hypocrisy are never in short supply, such as conservative CNN analyst Scott Jennings trashing Jimmy Carter’s legacy shortly after his death. Where was the indignation from the right then, some X users wondered?

Expecting consistency, however, reflects another kind of naïveté. No, pundits and hosts on Fox News are generally not going to reference acts of political violence committed against Democrats, such as the shooting deaths of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in June, the kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or the firebomb attack against Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.

Nor are they are going to belatedly apologize for mocking Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, after he was brutally assaulted in their home in 2022, even as they deride reaction on the left to Kirk.

About all one can expect, or really hope, is that pundits and politicians don’t throw gasoline on the fire, and even that’s often too much to ask. Witness Fox host Jesse Watters, who vowed, “We’re gonna avenge Charlie’s death” on Wednesday, after saying, “They are at war with us,” tossing out that vague pronoun before anything was known about Kirk’s killer. Ditto for Elon Musk, who irresponsibly tweeted, “The left is the party of murder.”

MAGA figures also raced to accuse the left of celebrating Kirk’s death, despite scant evidence of any major accounts or voices doing anything of the kind. Others trotted out more war analogies, further fanning the flames.

Referring to the vitriol on X, left-leaning activist Will Stancil posted, “This very site is the greatest threat to America’s internal political stability in almost a century: a rallying ground where extremists earn tens of thousands of dollars or more for calling for political violence.”

A few of those who made messes did seek to clean them up. MSNBC apologized for Dowd’s remarks as being “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable,” but the network surely helped cause that by throwing on a political pundit after the shooting — someone who noted he didn’t share Kirk’s views or hold him in high regard. Nor was Dowd the only person to pay a quick price; DC Comics dropped a planned Batman spinoff series after writer Gretchen Felker-Martin’s response to the assassination on social media.

“Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” DC said in a statement.

Each new act of political violence brings an inevitable and sober discussion about what can be done to break the pattern. Any reasonable discourse along those lines, however, should include contemplating what media can do to stop repeating its mistakes, which were on abundant display in the hours after Kirk’s death.

It’s easy enough to cue up the “Breaking News” chyrons, unleash the instant analysis and start calling out the other side for its brazen hypocrisy. But rest assured, future apologies, firings and hastily issued press releases will go hand in hand with that, unless, by some miracle, networks implement policies that encourage people to think before they speak — and reinforce that it’s OK, really, to have an unexpressed thought.

The post Matthew Dowd’s MSNBC Ouster Over Charlie Kirk Comments Speaks Volumes About When to Shut Up appeared first on TheWrap.