Trump Adviser Warns Stephen Colbert Is Just the Beginning

The cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show is apparently a sign of what’s to come for America’s media industry.

Speaking with CNBC Friday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blamed the comedy show’s demise on a lack of profitability, and warned that the “media industry across this country needs a course correction.”

“The American people simply do not trust the mainstream media,” Carr said, likening the current field of late-night comedy shows to genuine news outlets.

He has a point: Media trust has never been so low in this country. A February Gallup survey found that trust in news had fallen to a five-decade low, with just 31 percent of polled Americans claiming to trust the mainstream media a “great deal” or “a fair amount,” while 36 percent said they didn’t trust traditional news sources “at all.”

But threatening to forcibly curtail content via the heavy hand of the federal government—à la some Russian- or North Korean–inspired trajectory—is not the solution.

“For broadcasters, they have a federal license and they are obligated to operate in the public interest,” Carr said. “In the extent that we’re starting to see some changes, I think that’s a good thing.”

Some of the most prominent news companies in the country have already been pressured into changing their coverage of Trump. The longtime head of 60 Minutes, Bill Owens, quit after Paramount executives attempted to interfere with the show’s content, reportedly pressuring him to change how the show reports on the president. The former president of CBS, Wendy McMahon, resigned under similar circumstances shortly afterward.

Colbert’s show—the most popular show in its time slot—was canceled three days after the comedian claimed that Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over his groundless lawsuit targeting Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview looked like a “big, fat bribe.”

In his first show back following the announcement, Colbert didn’t deny that it was possible the show was hemorrhaging money. However, he said he couldn’t work out the $40 million loss that an unidentified Paramount source leaked to The New York Post—until he considered another possibility.

“$40 million is a big number. I could see us losing $24 million. But where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16 million? Oh yeah,” Colbert said.

The FCC approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance Thursday.

Asked on three occasions Friday morning whether he would consider pardoning convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump first said he didn’t “want to talk about” it and, later, made a point to note he is “allowed” to do so.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” the president responded to the first query about a potential pardon.

Later, Trump said: “It’s something I haven’t thought about. It’s really some—it’s some. I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.”

“But you wouldn’t rule it out?” a reporter followed up, but Trump did not reply.

Later still, the president told reporters, “I certainly can’t talk about pardons right now.”

While the president’s response wasn’t a “Yes,” it certainly wasn’t a “No,” either. (And recall that, in 2019 and 2020, Trump said he hadn’t thought about pardoning Roger Stone, whom he pardoned in December 2020.)

Trump’s glaring nonanswers come as his allies appear increasingly open to embracing Maxwell as a way out of his Epstein mire. The administration is facing an uproar over its lack of transparency and Trump’s personal ties to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse minors. (When she was arrested by the FBI in 2020, Trump had said, “I wish her well.”)

Despite Maxwell’s crimes, as Rolling Stone reported Thursday, “the Trump administration and the president’s allies in Congress seem to think that if they get Maxwell to attest that Trump did nothing wrong,” it will solve everything. MAGA media has also begun cozying up to the convicted sex criminal.

In recent days, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Maxwell and will depose her next month. Meanwhile, Todd Blanche, Trump’s deputy attorney general and former personal lawyer, has met with Maxwell and will meet again Friday, purportedly to gain information “about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.”

The potential for corruption in Blanche’s closed-door sit-downs with Maxwell, who has everything to gain from aiding the president, is plain, as has been much observed by Democratic lawmakers and other critics. The observation was even made by Trump toady House Speaker Mike Johnson, who recently told reporters that he backed the House Oversight Committee’s move to subpoena Maxwell while noting an “obvious concern”:

Could she be counted on to tell the truth? Is she a credible witness? I mean, this is a person who’s been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible, unspeakable, conspiratorial acts, and acts against innocent young people. I mean, can we trust what she’s going to say?

Palm Beach County Attorney Dave Aronberg and former aide to Pam Bondi, now Trump’s attorney general, has speculated that the DOJ’s talks with Maxwell could presage a “hidden pardon” deal.

And of course it wouldn’t be unprecedented for Trump to flagrantly abuse the pardon power.

This story has been updated.

President Trump suggested on Friday that Israel should “finish the job” and “get rid of it,” when asked about Gaza, which is now suffering from mass starvation due to Israel’s blockade.

“Gaza, they pulled out of Gaza, they pulled out in terms of negotiating. It was too bad, Hamas didn’t really wanna make a deal. I think they wanna die. And it’s very, very bad,” the president said on Friday before departing for Scotland. “You’re gonna have to finish the job … don’t forget, we got a lotta hostages out. So now we’re down to the final hostages and they know what happens after you get the final hostages. And basically because of that they really didn’t wanna make a deal I saw that. So they pulled out, they’re gonna have to fight, they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of it.”

The Trump administration has been explicit about its horrifying vision for Gaza, as the president clearly views it as potential property for an Israeli beach resort rather than an area that human beings call home. The genocidal language he casually uses here, saying that Israel needed to “get rid of it,” only reinforces that.

While leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and the U.K.’s Kier Starmer have this week finally decided that the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—for throwing rocks, for waiting for aid, for doing journalism, for simply refusing to leave their homes—has become too much, Trump has tripled down in his dismissiveness. All signs point to him allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s butchering of Palestine to continue uninhibited.

A weak dollar is better than a strong dollar, according to Donald Trump.

The dollar hasn’t fallen this fast since 1973. Over the last six months, the dollar has declined more than 10 percent against America’s most prominent trading partners, bringing the value of the world’s reserve currency to a three-year low.

“Why has the dollar fallen so much, and are you concerned about that?” a reporter asked Trump outside of the White House Friday.

“Well, I’m a person that likes a strong dollar, but a weak dollar makes you a hell of a lot more money,” Trump said. “I don’t know if you study, but I study it.”

“I went to Penn and Wharton,” the reporter said, referring to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious business school. “So I know this.”

“Then I know you’re smart,” Trump said. “So when we have a strong dollar, one thing happens—it sounds good. But you don’t do any tourism, you can’t sell tractors, you can’t sell trucks, you can’t sell anything.”

But tourism is booming everywhere but the U.S. A study from the World Travel & Tourism Council last month found that the U.S. was the only country in the world forecast to have less international travel spending, with the potential to lose as much as $12.5 billion in the category compared to last year, a figure that has rattled the hospitality and aviation industries. And Trump hasn’t made it easier: Prospective visitors might have to contend with more red tape to enter the country, paying a $250 “visa integrity fee” in addition to the $185 price tag on the nonimmigrant visa itself.

“It is good for inflation, that’s about it. But we have no inflation, we wiped out inflation,” the president noted Friday, further explaining his “strong dollar” ideology. Yet his administration did not actually eliminate inflation—it’s still a major concern, fueled in large part by Trump’s roller-coaster tariff plan.

“It doesn’t sound good, but you make a hell of a lot more money with a weaker dollar—not a weak dollar, but a weaker dollar,” Trump said, claiming that America’s trading partners, including China and Japan, were “fighting” for their own weaker currencies.

“And it’s good psychologically, it makes you feel good,” he added.

Donald Trump’s latest tactic of bringing up Barack Obama’s administration every time someone asks him about Jeffrey Epstein is getting downright ridiculous. 

Speaking to the press outside of the White House Friday, Trump once again denied writing a “bawdy” birthday message for Epstein in 2003 as part of a book of birthday notes for the alleged sex offender. 

“I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, that’s happened a lot,” Trump said. 

But the president wasn’t satisfied with simply answering the question—he took a moment to return to his favorite subject. 

“All you have to do is take a look at the dossier, the fake dossier,” Trump continued. “Everything’s fake with that administration. Everything’s fake with the Democrats. Take a look at what they just found about the dossier. Everything is fake, they’re a bunch of sick people.”

Trump was likely referring to the Steele dossier, a collection of reporting by former British spy Christopher Steele, which had been used to obtain surveillance warrants on a former Trump campaign adviser after the 2016 presidential election. 

Here, Trump is attempting to compare the validity of his crude birthday letter to the dossier, of which much of the contents has since been discredited or denied. In a broader sense, his administration is hoping to cast the ongoing fallout over Epstein as yet another vicious “hoax.” Even as president, Trump continues to cast himself as some sort of victim. 

But evidence of Trump’s ties to Epstein, who once claimed to be the president’s “closest friend,” are mounting. 

Earlier this week, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard claimed that the Obama administration had “used already discredited information like the Steele dossier—they knew it was discredited at the time.”

It’s worth noting that the dossier was not the sole basis for the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. After questions arose about the dossier’s credibility, the FBI continued to pursue the surveillance warrants for other information.  

Gabbard has emerged as the main sycophant in charge of Trump’s smoke screen, setting off on a campaign to prove the Obama administration manufactured the narrative that Moscow wanted Trump in power (Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that he did! Mystery solved!). But her declassified report didn’t really prove anything at all, and she has quickly returned to her own favorite pastime: spouting debunked Russian propaganda. 

Trump also said Friday that people should spend more time focused on the others who reportedly wrote birthday notes for Epstein, such as former president Bill Clinton.