ABC’s The View Wimps Out, Shies Away From Politics After Trump Threats

from the cowards-and-zealots dept

Back in February, Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr launched a fake “investigation” of ABC because the network’s comedians and daytime talk show hosts hadn’t adequately kissed Republican ass.

Five months later and ABC’s The View is wimping out when it comes to hosting politicians at all, for fear it will upset the country’s mad idiot king:

“Since then, the ABC talk show hasn’t featured a single political candidate running in a competitive midterm race, according to a Semafor analysis.”

Earlier in the year, Republicans were upset that The View hosted Texas Democratic hopeful James Talarico. That triggered an entire fake “investigation” and a threatened revocation of ABC’s broadcast licenses by Carr, who falsely claimed that the daytime talk show had violated the FCC’s dated and irrelevant “equal time” rule requiring that TV stations give equal time to political candidates from both parties.

It apparently didn’t matter that Carr’s threats were empty, that any legal case would be laughed out of court on First Amendment grounds, that Carr actively avoids enforcing such laws for right wing radio, that evidence emerged Carr had actively concocted an entire conspiracy to make ABC look guilty, or that The View had clearly been exempt from the FCC’s “equal time” rules since 2002.

The threat of annoying costly legal headaches were still apparently enough to scare ABC (and likely other outlets) away from hosting politicians who would be critical of Trump.

It’s a shame that ABC, which had previously started to show some a signs of life in its battle with the thin-skinned U.S. president, suddenly doesn’t really want to talk about why The View rejected requests to host NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or the democratic socialist candidates he supported for Congress, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez:

“A spokesperson declined to provide Semafor with a comment about how the show was reacting to the inquiry but has previously said the show is a “bona fide news program” and therefore isn’t subject to the equal time rule.”

Carr, you’ll recall, also threatened San Francisco area AM radio station KCBS late last year simply for reporting on local ICE activity, resulting in the station demoting one anchor and softening its political coverage overall. Carr also tried (and failed) to censor and fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel after the late night host made a joke about deceased right wing propagandist and racist Charlie Kirk.

That said, avoiding politics entirely for fear of losing money is fairly common across corporate media (including outlets like Semafor), resulting in no shortage of pseudo-journalism that pulls its punches, particularly when it comes to being honest about the continued Republican descent into bigotry and fascism.

Filed Under: brendan carr, censorship, chilling effects, equal time rule, fcc, first amendment, free speech, jimmy kimmel, the view

Companies: abc, disney