"The pressure that the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, put on ABC and its parent company, Disney, to suspend the late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel was the most visible manifestation of this Trumpian initiative, but Carr himself made clear that the blitz isn't over. "We're not done yet," he told CNBC, alluding to further changes in the media ecosystem."
"There's another clarifying takeaway: as long as Trump continues to abuse his executive power with the presumptive backing of the legislature and the Supreme Court, the titans of American capitalism can't be relied on to push back against him. This was evident not only in Kimmel's suspension but during the recent dinner at the White House attended by more than twenty tech moguls including Apple's Tim Cook, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, and Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, who took turns praising Trump and thanking him for his leadership."
"Given the President's long-standing support for corporate tax cuts and deregulation of industry, this pusillanimity is perhaps not so surprising. Still, during Trump's first term, business leaders did occasionally mount some opposition. In the summer of 2017, after Trump said there were "very fine people" on both sides of a clash between white supremacists and counter-protesters at a rally in Charlottesville, many members of a White House business advisory council quit, and the body ended up collapsing."
Donald Trump is using the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext for an authoritarian crackdown. The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, pressured ABC and Disney to suspend Jimmy Kimmel and warned that the blitz against media isn't over. More than twenty tech executives, including Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai, attended a White House dinner and praised and thanked the President. Corporate leaders' reluctance to resist reflects alignment with Trump's support for corporate tax cuts and deregulation. Business opposition has occurred previously, such as resignations from a White House advisory council after Charlottesville and actions around January 6, 2021.
#corporate-self-preservation #executive-power-abuse #media-pressure-and-censorship #tech-industry-acquiescence
Read at The New Yorker
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