A Weekend Reid: our maga autocracy is on autopilot, while Trump crashes out on Epstein

The police state autocracy continues to erect itself, while Donald runs on swollen ankles from the Epstein files and that birthday book

Our little autocracy is now fully self-executing.

Symbolic image, Trump as joker, Gotham-USA, democracy versus autocracy, US democracy in danger, EU and Germany under political pressure. imageBROKER/Kurt Amthor

Donald Trump no longer needs to do much more than fire off a few Truth Social meltdowns to get major corporations, industry leaders, and of course, the Justice Department to fully implement his authoritarian desires. At this point, Trumpism doesn’t even need him.

With a few notable exceptions like Harvard and Georgetown Law School, many colleges and institutions are self-regulating to ensure that they do nothing to disturb the MAGA king and the members of The Faith; “revising” or ending scholarships targeting minority students. Even the programs that remain, like a non-race conscious Johns Hopkins scholarship offering free medical school tuition to students whose families earn less than $300,000 a year, come under immediate attack by the “whites only” establishment. After all, why should we encourage the addition of more, badly needed U.S. doctors from non-traditional backgrounds when there are so many white men from wealthy, conservative families available to educate for free by giving them those scholarships?

Fearful of investigation or even prosecution by the new, perverse DOJ “civil rights division” (which has redirected its mission to the sole protection of white Americans) many companies are prophylatically ditching anything that might even look like diversity, equity and inclusion, with Black women’s unemployment rates rising as a result. The newly anti-DEI retailer Target, fresh from ruining Essence Fest 2025 with its presence, was a million-dollar donor to the second Trump inaugural. Because of course.

The Republican Party has long since capitulated, with its members reduced to robotically passing whatever bill they’re ordered to, knowing it will hurt their constituents, and then whispering to journalists that they hate what they’ve done.

While Democrats … well … they’re around…

Hollywood is quietly backing away from diverse casts, themes and storylines that might displease the white nationalist right, showing Black women executives the door and declining to renew even the most popular Black-helmed titles, like The Residence.

Internationally, we’re a joke. With Trump’s TACO tariffs making economists’ heads spin, the world is moving on with China and abandoning the U.S. as a vacation and investment destination. And why wouldn’t they? To try to scrounge up cash as it empties the coffers for the billionaire tax cut, the regime is now charging a “visa integrity fee” surcharge to foreign visitors, when they’re not harassing them, rifling through their phones looking for Trump disses, or detaining them. It’s so bad for immigrants and visitors here, In France — the nation that gifted us the Statue of Liberty, an artist has erected a giant mural in Roubaix showing her weeping.

And with the Trump Injustice Department all but declaring the police shootings and brutalization of Black Americans to be not just legally justifiable, but damned near desirable, while turning ICE into a national secret police force larger than the armies of most countries on earth, and getting the U.S. into the for-profit concentration camp business, America feels more and more like an actual police state. Even as some the troops themselves seem demoralized.

Fear has become the coin of the American realm. The fear that the next protest will trigger Trump to unleash the Insurrection Act is real, despite protesters continuing to bravely press forward. Trump has already-established the Orwellian policy of unleashing the U.S. military onto American streets, over the objection of state and local governments. And it’s only the blue state governors who are even raising an alarm. Red states like Texas are supine in the face of an increasingly blatant autocratic federal government, even as that government leaves their children to drown. Not a peep of alarm is raised by the party of family values.

And that’s not even to begin talking about the growing specter of death from lack of abortion care and rejection of measles vaccines in Red America.

In short order, Trump has seemed to break America.

But no capitulation has been starker than that of the corporate media.

I’m proud to be included in this excellent Variety article on the ways Trump has set fire to the free press, whose major media companies have been falling to their knees like wobbly bowling pins, from ABC’s scandalous $16 million settlement over George Stephanopoulos saying a true thing about Donald Trump’s sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carrol, and the alleged orders delivered to The View to tone it down on Trump; to the equally humiliating Paramount / CBS settlement of Trump’s bogus lawsuit regarding 60 Minutes, to the serial departure of cable and broadcast journalists (myself included) in what sure looks like a broad attempt by major media companies to make nice with the regime so they can pull off their mergers and acquisitions without drawing the eye of Sauron. The Variety piece zeroed in on the Parmount capitulation:

Late on July 1, Paramount Global announced the settlement with Trump. He had sued CBS five days before the 2024 presidential election over the allegedly deceptive editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris — seeking an absurdly astronomical $20 billion in damages. Trump cited a Texas consumer-protection law as the basis for his complaint. CBS and Paramount called the suit “meritless” and sought to have it tossed. Legal experts said the company was fully protected by the First Amendment. CBS News released transcripts of the interview, showing that it used different parts of Harris’ answer to a single question about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — which is standard industry practice.

But Paramount settled anyway, by all appearances to try to clear the way for the Trump administration’s approval of its Skydance Media merger deal.

“It’s a sad day for journalism,” Dan Rather, the legendary 24-year anchor of “CBS Evening News,” tells Variety. “It’s a sad day for ‘60 Minutes’ and CBS News. I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, ‘Yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners.”

Jon Stewart blasted his corporate bosses on the July 7 episode of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” calling the settlement “shameful” and likening it to a mob shakedown. Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft, who was Stewart’s guest that evening, agreed and said it was “devastating” to morale at the newsmagazine: “I think there is a lot of fear over there. Fear of losing their jobs. Fear of losing their country. Fear of losing the First Amendment.” …

… The FCC has immense discretion over license renewals and transfers, and Paramount needs its blessing to complete the sale of its local stations to Skydance ownership. The pending Skydance deal “created leverage” for Trump’s legal team, says Mark Fowler, who was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan. “Without the FCC’s timing and coordination, they could not have done this. I’d say it’s pretty shameful.” (The FCC did not respond to a request for comment.)

As to “reputational damage,” however, CBS News’ own employees say the Trump payout will only tarnish the “60 Minutes” brand. Months of news reports about Paramount’s negotiations with Trump’s lawyers about a settlement (or lack of one) allowed the newsmagazine to be seen as “the opposition,” says a network insider. “It’s so damaging.”

One silver lining: Paramount and CBS are not issuing any kind of apology under the settlement. “Thank goodness there’s no apology,” says one CBS News correspondent. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

But the backlash against what was seen as Paramount’s capitulation to Trump was broad and severe. “This Paramount settlement is the nadir for the network,” Armen Keteyian, an Emmy-winning journalist who was an investigative correspondent for CBS News and “60 Minutes” for 12 years, wrote in a post on X. He called it “a breach of the public trust” that CBS broadcasting legends Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt “and thousands of us worked decades to build.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was among those slamming the settlement. “The Trump administration’s level of sheer corruption is appalling, and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism,” she said. Warren called for “a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken.” Of course, such a federal charge would not likely to be brought by the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

In May, Warren, along with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden, warned Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone that a settlement with Trump could run afoul of a federal anti-bribery law — in other words, that Paramount could be seen as illegally paying Trump in return for his giving the go-ahead for the company’s Skydance deal. (Commenting on the senators’ warning to Redstone, a White House spokesman said, in part, “Anyone who seriously believes the president could be bribed by anyone, especially a liberal and notoriously unreliable institution like Paramount, lacks the intelligence to hold public office.”)

The timing of the piece couldn’t be more auspicious, given that we just learned that Paramount is canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and ending the franchise entirely, using the excuse of financial necessity in the statement they released to the press yesterday:

“We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire ‘The Late Show’ franchise” in May of 2026, CBS executives said in a statement. “We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television. This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

The announcement, which devastated fans (including yours truly) … Colbert’s industry friends. His pal and fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel in my humble opinion had the best succinct response:

Perhaps coincidentally (LOL) the announcement cam three days after Colbert did this hilariously pointed monologue on the show:

And now we learn that the 30 pieces of silver were passed to Paramount’s CEO in the days before the die was cast. From Axios:

Skydance CEO David Ellison and his lawyer met with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr and an FCC lawyer on Tuesday, a new regulatory filing shows.

Why it matters: The meeting came two days before CBS abruptly announced that it is canceling "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" after the next season in May 2026, citing "financial" reasons.

Among the things discussed in the meeting with the Project 2025 co-author?

• They urged the FCC's Media Bureau to "promptly grant" Paramount's applications to transfer control of its broadcast licenses to its new owners, after emphasizing "the public interest benefits" of the deal in the meeting.

• "[W]e explained the Ellison family and RedBird represent fresh leadership with the vision and experience needed to drive New Paramount's long-term growth in the face of the challenges presented by today's media landscape, all while preserving and enhancing the legacy and broad reach of both the national CBS television network and the company's 28 owned-and-operated local television stations," Ellison's lawyer wrote.

• "Relatedly, we discussed Skydance's commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS's editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers," he added. [Emphasis added]

Between the lines: CBS canceled "The Late Show" just days after its parent company, Paramount, agreed to settle a lawsuit with President Trump.

And … scene.

I’m going to take a leap and guess that this fresh commitment to “unbiased journalism” and “diverse viewpoints,” is meant to be somehow different from the already award-winning coverage that shows like 60 Minutes have done for decades? Could it be, that what the CEO promised was that Trump, who as a senior citizen with an old-age valve disorder, spends a lot of time watching TV, won’t have to face tough reporting on his actions or his regime, or see himself mocked on CBS, ever again, if Carr will just let the merger happen?

Colbert was not just tough on Paramount. He has been tough on Trump, just as NBC’s Seth Meyers and Saturday night Live and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel often mock and skewer wanna-be King Don, who as anyone who has ever researched him can tell you does not laugh, and has no sense of humor. Here is what his former FBI director, James Comey told George Stephanopoulos in a 2018 interview:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You notice something else – during that dinner. You say the President didn’t laugh.

COMEY: Yeah, not at all. And I was struck by it. So struck by it, it stayed with me, that I’ve never seen him laugh. Not in public, not in private. And at a dinner with someone – I mean, I’m not a comedian but I occasionally say something that’s funny that people chuckle with each other.

But I never saw anything that resembled a laugh. And I could over-interpret that, I could be – also, we’re missing something that – that maybe he’s – he’s breaking up in stitches with other people other than the FBI director, but I also tried – after I got fired, I thought – that stayed with me. And so I went and tried to find examples of videos where he’s laughing and I could only find that really wasn’t a genuine laugh.

And this is from Trump’s own niece, Mary Trump:

Your father took great pleasure in life. I keep thinking of this prank where he had a friend hijack a hearse and one of them gets in a coffin. It’s exactly the kind of thing you can’t imagine Donald doing. There’s something so humorless and sterile about him. Is he happy?

There’s no way he could be happy because the myths that have been created about him and that he’s perpetuated and believes about himself are always in constant danger of disintegrating. On some deep level, he knows that. He’s very much always living in the moment. So how can you be happy?

And how can you be happy if you don’t laugh or appreciate humor? What that says to me, because my grandfather also didn’t laugh, is that laughing is to make yourself vulnerable, it’s to let down your guard in some way, it’s to lose a little bit of control. And that can’t happen. That is not allowed to happen. So, no, I don’t believe he’s happy. Unfortunately, I don’t believe he’s capable of being happy, because it wasn’t something to aspire to in my family.

Trump, who Omarosa Manigault told me back when I was doing AM Joy on MSNBC weekends, decided to run for president because President Obama mocked him at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner, especially cannot take a joke at his own expense. It’s clear what he wants: he wants all of television, broadcast and cable, to stop reporting “bad things” about him, treat him deferentially and kiss his ass, like the media in North Korea does with Kim Jong Un, or Fox and Newsmax already do for him here in the U.S. And he wants comedians to stop laughing at him. He is literally Charlie X from that old Star Trek episode:

And he is reshaping America into one giant safe space for him and his supporters, where they will never have to feel uncomfortable, mediocre or ignored by the cool kids again.

Trump shares his right wing base’s generalized rage at frequently being the butt of jokes told by popular, mainstream, secular, comedians. And while their certainly are conservatives in Hollywood (IMDB helpfully made an actual list of them, perhaps to make it easier for the newly devalued Kennedy Center to do bookings?) conservatives often grouse that “their” comedians and actors get fewer roles and opportunities in socially liberal Hollywood, once their social and political views are known.

Trump and his base have long been screwfaced over SNL and other comedians mockery of Republican politicians, especially Trump himself. That’s why so many of them flock to the breathtakingly unfunny Greg Gutfield, who gives the right what it craves: seething mockery of “the left” posing as comedy. And while right wingers love to crow that he has more viewers than any of the three network late night shows, which come on at 11:35 or 12:35 a.m. (late, late night) in the case of Myers, Gutfield doesn’t actually compete with them directly. He’s on at 10 p.m., when more people are awake. That said, he has about 1 million more viewers on an average night than the highest rated late night show, which happens to be … The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

This, as a larger scale climb-down from late night appears to be under way:

The news of “The Late Show’s” cancellation by CBS doesn’t just end a franchise that had, to this point, lasted more than 30 years. It looks like the beginning of the end of an entire category of television. With one network now opting out of late-night talk entirely, how long will it be before the genre just goes away?

CBS announced the cancellation nearly a full year before it is to take effect, making current host Stephen Colbert a lame duck of sorts; he will continue hosting the show through May 2026, at which point it will simply disappear. Observers have noted with interest that Colbert has, lately, been especially critical of CBS’s parent company, Paramount; while this may have made him less beloved internally, the trendlines on late night have been moving in the wrong direction for some time.

Large scale trend or not, The Writers Guild East, which will see dozens of its members lose their jobs in the Colbert cancelation, is calling for an investigation by New York Attorney General LeTisha James, into whether the whole thing is just one giant bribe, as Colbert said in his monologue. The union is citing the precedent of “the California State Senate, which in May launched an inquiry into Paramount Global’s controversial $16 million settlement with President Trump over the editing of a Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview in 2024.”

Read the WGA’s full statement below.

On July 2nd, Paramount agreed to settle a baseless lawsuit brought against 60 Minutes and CBS News by President Trump for $16 million. On July 15, during a regular show of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert went on-air and called the settlement a “big fat bribe” in exchange for a favorable decision on the proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance, a charge currently under investigation in California.

Less than 48 hours later, on July 17, Paramount canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a show currently performing first in its timeslot, giving vague references to the program’s “financial performance” as the only explanation. For ten years, the show has been one of the most successful, beloved and profitable programs on CBS, entertaining an audience of millions on late night television, on streaming services and across social media.

Given Paramount’s recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS News lawsuit, the Writers Guild of America has significant concerns that The Late Show’s cancelation is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump Administration as the company looks for merger approval

Cancelations are part of the business, but a corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society. Paramount’s decision comes against a backdrop of relentless attacks on a free press by President Trump, through lawsuits against CBS and ABC, threatened litigation of media organizations with critical coverage, and the unconscionable defunding of PBS and NPR.

Trump of course is celebrating the coming end of the show, and spoiling for ABC to take the axe to Kimmel’s too. perhaps desperately hoping it will take attention off of the Epstein files, which currently have him crashing out and attacking his own supporters whom he and half his cabinet groomed to believe were THE POINT of putting him back in the White House … as well as a certain alleged birthday note, complete with a magic marker drawing the Wall Street Journal says he sent his longtime pal on the event of Epstein’s 50th birthday…

Trump of course, is now suing the Journal, Dow Jones, and Rupert Murdoch himself, for defamation, and $10 billion. I asked David Cay Johnston on the show Friday night if he thinks Rupert will settle, like his Fox “News” did in the Dominion lawsuit. He said his guess would be “no.” They have the birthday book. And Trump saying he doesn’t doodle is a clearly refutable lie, since for years, he regularly sold his “doodles” for charity. On the show, former federal prosecutor Paul Butler predicted the discovery in the lawsuit will be more damaging even than the discovery in the E. Jean Carrol suit, which Trump lost, having sexually abused Ms. Carrol by literally grabbing her by the p—sy.

Colbert’s former Comedy Central co-star, Jon Stewart, is voicing skepticism that The Daily Show will survive the Skydance sellout, saying Skydance could sell the place for parts, though it remains the most valuable asset at Comedy Central.

For all we know, a year from now, all that will be on our TVs will be Fox and Newsmax pro-Trump verbal felatio, re-runs of The Apprentice, and fake Christian* game shows featuring scantily clad models in 4-inch heels (white ladies only — sorry, minority gals!) … aging Ken Doll hosts, “Guess the Leviticus Verse” challenges, and chastity belts as prizes. That and the annual rerun of The Passion of the Christ will be all there is to ease the boredom for us ladies as we wait for our mandatory husbands to get home from their brand new, back-breaking, iPhone factory, ICE secret police, razor wire wall, alligator mote, militarized border patrol and field labor jobs. (Don’t worry, fellas! You’ll each get a mandatory MAGA hat to keep the sun off your brow.)

And when the guys get home and eat the dinners we’ve cooked from scratch under pain of arrest and concentration camp detention without trial, we can cuddle up with our mandatory six children per household around our cool new, American-made, government-installed two-way view TVs (where we can watch and be watched) and enjoy the nightly Greg Gutfield comedy recap on CBS.

So much to look forward too in Trumpmerica!

Oh, and be sure to sign up online during the 6 hours per day that the Trumpernet is up and running, so you can snag your season tickets to the new Donald Trump / Kennedy (Jr) Center. Their annual production of Carmen, staring Lara Trump and Scott Baio is sure to be the bees knees…

There is no government. There are no courts.

The Leonard Leo-built Supreme Court continues to slash away at the power of congress, regulators, and even the courts themselves, to limit Trump’s power as president. The latest comes in a ruling on the final day of the SCOTUS session, in which the six right wing justices declared that when it comes to Trump defying even judicial rulings, there’s really not much that can be done.

• Limiting ability of judges to stop Trump: The Supreme Court limited the ability of plaintiffs to seek nationwide orders that temporarily halt the government from enforcing a policy. However, the court did leave intact the ability of plaintiffs to get broad relief through class action lawsuits or if it was required to address their harm. The court also signaled that the president’s plan to effectively end birthright citizenship may never be enforced.

• What this means: For Trump, this means his opponents will have to jump through additional hoops to try to shut down policies on a nationwide basis. While the court handed off the issue of birthright citizenship to lower courts to assess, its ruling may be beneficial to Trump on other policies, by making it harder for individuals to seek a temporary pause when they feel their rights have been violated.

• Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion: In the opinion, Barrett wrote federal courts “do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them.”

• Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent: She said the court’s majority had “shamefully” played along with the administration’s “gamesmanship” in the case, which she described as an attempt to enforce a “patently unconstitutional” policy by not asking the justices to bless the policy, but instead to limit the power of federal judges around the country.

• Ketanji Brown Jackson’s solo dissent: The appointee of former President Joe Biden accused her conservative colleagues of creating “an existential threat to the rule of law” by allowing Trump to “violate the Constitution.”

And Trump seems determined to ensure that as long as he lives, no court will ever change Amy’s vibe. His move to elevate his principle bully-boy, Emil Bove, who crashed and burned as he failed to stave off Trump’s felony conviction in the New York hush money case, but got a cushy DOJ job anyway, to a court that would put him in line for a SCOTUS seat.

The nomination of Emil Bove III to a federal appeals court suggests that President Trump has a new prototype and a new agenda when it comes to the law: Out with the eggheads and in with the street fighters. His first-term judicial appointments transformed constitutional law on a range of subjects, like abortion and affirmative action. In his first term, he served the conservative movement; this time, the movement must serve him.

The president has staffed the top leadership of the Justice Department with individuals whose chief qualification appears to be that they represented Mr. Trump as private lawyers. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, was one of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers at his first impeachment trial. (Previously, she was the attorney general of Florida.) Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, represented Mr. Trump at his criminal trial in Manhattan. D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, was the lead counsel for Mr. Trump at the Supreme Court when he challenged his prosecution in Trump v. United States. Mr. Bove, who is now Mr. Blanche’s principal deputy in the Justice Department, was his partner in the defense of Mr. Trump in Manhattan. Just as Mr. Trump has put his onetime advocates at the pinnacle of American law enforcement, the nomination of Mr. Bove signals the president’s desire to embed his loyalists in the judicial branch.

With a devoted executive branch and a compliant Congress, Mr. Trump has faced real resistance only from the judiciary, and the nomination of Mr. Bove marks the beginning of his counterattack. His prominence at the Justice Department raises the question of why the president would sideline Mr. Bove to fill a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, an important lifetime position reviewing federal cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware but one well removed from carrying out the Trump agenda from day to day.

The answer, which seemed apparent if unspoken at Mr. Bove’s confirmation hearing last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, is that the president is grooming Mr. Bove for bigger things — possibly a seat on the Supreme Court.

But is he qualified? To quote Toobin again… no:

At the age of 44, Mr. Bove has never written anything of consequence or even, apparently, expressed any views on the central issues of constitutional law. That in itself is not unprecedented for a lower court nominee, but what does distinguish Mr. Bove is his record of hard-edge advocacy and loyalty to Mr. Trump.

But he has the kind of character that Trump doesn’t just prefer, but rather demands:

In 2018 a defense lawyer, speaking on behalf of a group of colleagues, including several former prosecutors, wrote to a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office complaining about Mr. Bove’s “unprofessional and unethical” behavior. One former assistant U.S. attorney quoted in the email said that Mr. Bove was “a prosecutor version of a drunken driver — completely out of control” and that Mr. Bove was “quick to bully and threaten.” Still another said that he “seems totally hung up on a power trip.”

That complaint was followed by an incident that appeared to vindicate these warnings, when a federal judge dismissed a prosecution supervised by Mr. Bove after a request from the U.S. attorney’s office. In the case, which involved charges that the defendant had evaded sanctions imposed on Iran, the judge found that prosecutors had attempted to bury exculpatory evidence and then lied to the court about the matter. The misconduct was so severe that the U.S. attorney’s office, even after a jury verdict in its favor, chose instead to end the prosecution.

Then a group of his colleagues complained that Mr. Bove showed uncontrolled anger and was abusive toward subordinates, and they asked that he be demoted from a supervisory role. Mr. Bove was not demoted, but he decided to leave the U.S. attorney’s office shortly after that, in 2021.

He sounds like a young Alito.

America, you in trouble, girl…

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