Comcast Happy To Fund Trump’s Ballroom Despite Years Of Being Shit On

from the it’s-Comcastic dept

Thanks to the government shutdown, federal employees are stuck sitting in long food bank lines just to survive. While President Trump is destroying the White House east wing to install a ballroom nobody asked for. Without any of the sort of approvals or security clearances you’d need to do it properly.

Trump falsely claims to be funding the ballroom’s $300 million price tag himself with the help of “patriotic donors.” But like any good grift, the price is certain to skyrocket well beyond that by the time the ballroom is completed sometime in the next three years. And he’s certainly not paying for any of it himself, it’s mostly being funded by the feckless shitweasels at Meta, Amazon, HP, Micron, Apple, Comcast, and T-Mobile. As well as fascist ass kissers like the Winklevoss twins.

You might recall that T-Mobile was caught up in the (now seemingly quaint) first Trump administration scandal involving influence patronage to Trump’s hotels. Comcast’s fealty is a more interesting choice, given the Trump’s FCC’s recent habits of launching fake investigations into whether Comcast is being suitably racist and sexist enough for the administration’s liking.

Trump (and his FCC lackey Brendan Carr) also endlessly criticize Comcast CEO Brian Roberts any time the company’s NBC news operations have wandered too close to the truth, like during its reporting on Abrego Garcia, a Maryland dad the Trump administration “accidentally” kidnapped, sent to a foreign gulag, brought back, concocted new false charges against, and is now trying to deport to Liberia.

From Oliver Darcy’s newsletter:

“The decision by Comcast and other deep-pocketed donors to finance the project underscores the grotesque dynamic between corporate America and the mercurial, transactional president: companies openly buying favor, or at least hoping to stay off Trump’s enemies list. And for Comcast, the decision is deeply personal. Trump has frequently attacked Roberts and his news outlets, publicly calling him a “lowlife” and mocking the corporation as “Concast.” The insults have continued even after the conglomerate spun off its cable networks, including the Trump-loathed MSNBC and business-focused CNBC.”

Comcast’s support for Trump’s ballroom has put the NBC family of journalists (or what is left of them after a recent spin off and mass layoffs) into a tricky predicament as they cover the mess on the air without getting too pointed about Comcast’s pathetic capitulation:

“On NBC News and MSNBC in recent days, anchors have taken pains to note—sometimes with audible discomfort—that their corporate parent, Comcast, is among the donors helping bankroll Trump’s ballroom. The move has left the network’s journalists in the awkward position of covering the story of their own company’s complicity. For Comcast and its chairman and chief executive, Brian Roberts, it marks a moment of corporate humiliation, being publicly shamed on his own air for deference to Trump, the same vengeful president who has repeatedly targeted Roberts by name.”

While Comcast may have suffered through a few barbs and fake FCC investigations, most of the news coverage oddly doesn’t mention the massive benefits from the second Trump administration.

In addition to a surge in taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks, the Trump administration has destroyed the what remained of functional U.S. federal corporate oversight. They’ve demolished not just net neutrality but the entirety of FCC and FTC autonomy. That means little to no competent regulatory oversight of a company with a multi-decade history of extremely dodgy, anti-competitive, anti-consumer behavior.

The Trump assault on the regulatory state and courts has made it effectively impossible to hold corporations like AT&T and Comcast accountable for literally anything (see: AT&T’s spying on wireless subscribers). How much is the complete destruction of the federal regulatory state worth over the next few decades? Probably significantly more than the millions Comcast is throwing at the ballroom.

The question for the pathetic simps at Comcast is: how high will the longer-term costs of capitulating with authoritarians be? These are bizarre, erratic zealots, whose often incoherent demands shift on a dime. And in countries like Russia, where this sort of oligarch autocratic fusion has been allowed to fester, it generally doesn’t end well for industry leaders who wander too close to windows.

We may not be quite there yet, but we’re on the path. The level of corruption and influence peddling we’re seeing now makes the last three decades of U.S. history look positively quaint by comparison. And the speed with which the abject cowards in the U.S. business community have fecklessly capitulated to the idiotic whims of mad tyrants isn’t something anybody’s likely to forget anytime soon.

That said, it’s not exactly a surprise for me (somebody who has covered Comcast professionally for two decades) that when push came to shove, Comcast corporation wound up being a soulless ass kisser.

Filed Under: brian roberts, consumer protection, corruption, influence, telecom, trump ballroom

Companies: comcast, nbc universal