☕️ ADIOS AMIGOS ☙ Monday, January 27, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump's new FCC Chair revives complaints against biased networks; Trump quenches spicy South American rebellion with a -4 handicap; historic approval ratings confound media; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! Welcome to Week Two. Will the new Administration’s pace start to slow down, or can it be sustained? Only time will tell. In this morning’s roundup: biased network coverage and new FCC Chairman combine in revived broadcast complaints potentially signaling seismic shifts in media power; Trump effortlessly squashes South American revolution before the communistas pulled their drab-colored uniforms on; Trump historic approval ratings at this point in his presidency; and an upcoming schedule of fiery Senate confirmation hearings looms.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Fox analyzed network coverage of two presidents’ pardons issued on the same day and guess what? The coverage was, shall we say, slightly imbalanced. ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a negligible 6% of their pardon-related coverage to the Biden Crime Family, but a massive 94% to January 6th pardons.

Only CBS gave more than a minute to the Biden pardons, clocking in at 64 ungenerous seconds of total coverage which, to CBS’s credit, was twice as much as either ABC or NBC.

We’re used to this kind of bias. It was utterly predictable. But this time, it could be very significant. The networks may have finally gone too far. Let me explain.

🔥 The Federal Communications Commission is managed by a five-member board. Its priorities are set by the Chairman, who is one of the five members and is appointed by the President. Among other things, the FCC Chairman wields power by controlling the Committee’s agenda, proposing new rules, and overseeing staffing, including the sub-appointment of various bureau chiefs.

Following his Inauguration last week, President Trump appointed as FCC Chairman a terrific Republican Commissioner, Brendan Carr. Mr. Carr, 46, holds a law degree —not from the Ivy League— and is often described as the Commission’s conservative firebrand. Mr. Carr did not sit on his hands last week.

While CBS, NBC, and ABC were busy filling the airwaves with totally biased pardon coverage, newly promoted Chairman Brenden Carr did magically revived bias complaints about all three networks (NY Post Headline):

Specifically, Carr flipped a last-minute order issued by the outgoing Biden Administration’s FCC Chair. The order dismissed three key complaints filed by conservative nonprofit The Center for American Rights, one against each network.

Among other things the Center complained about, and this will shock you, was biased coverage in Kamala Harris’ favor during the presidential campaign.

On one of her final days in the office, Biden’s appointed chairperson —Carr’s immediate predecessor— tried to ashcan the complaints. But once he assumed Chairmanship, Carr, trained in law, found a way to resurrect them. FCC rules provide a 30-day window following the end of a chair’s term, during which an incoming new chair can reconsider any last-minute orders. Had prior Chair Jessica Rosenworcel acted just a few weeks earlier, her dismissals would have been safe from Carr’s reconsideration.

But she waited to the last minute. It’s almost like Jessica didn’t think Harris could lose. For some reason. Oh well!

🔥 The FCC enjoys a tenuous hold over content. The reason it has any say about content at all is that broadcasters like ABC, NBC, and CBS use publicly owned airwaves, some of the most valuable electromagnetic real estate along the entire radio spectrum. Thus, despite the First Amendment, the networks consent to some supervision, usually limited to things like obscenity, hoaxes, and “distorted news,” which nowadays they call “misinformation.”

Last fall, a revolutionary idea related to DOGE and the national debt made the rounds. The Verge ran the story on October 30th, headlined “Why Donald Trump and Elon Musk are picking on broadcast TV.” Just one week before, on October 22nd, CNN ran a related story headlined, “Trump’s growing threats to strip broadcast licenses send chills across industry.”

You have to go back to October to find the discussion, since after Trump won the election, probably out of panicked self-interest, the media has clammed up about this issue tighter than Tony Soprano’s therapist during an FBI interrogation.

All last year, Candidate Trump repeatedly complained that the alphabet networks “should have their licenses or whatever they have taken away.” In late fall, an influential conservative thought leader floated a radical idea: strip the broadcast spectrum from the alphabet networks, auction it off for cutting-edge uses, and use the windfall to pay down the national debt.

That conservative thought leader, David Sacks, is now Trump’s brand-new AI and Cryptocurrency Czar. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who championed Sacks’ sell-the-spectrum proposal, now heads DOGE, with a mission to tackle the national debt. Musk argued passionately that the spectrum could be repurposed for transformative technologies like GPS and the “Internet of Things.”

Why would the alphabet networks even need the spectrum, in this age dominated by streaming anyway? Seriously, who—if anyone—is still using rabbit ears to watch the news?

Circling back around, consider how one of Brendan Carr’s first acts as the new FCC Chairman was to resurrect the three hastily dismissed complaints—one against each of the three major networks. It’s a move pregnant, as they say, with portentous possibility. But given the networks’ biased coverage of the two presidents’ pardons, it’s not even clear they’re smart enough to sweat bullets.

🔥 We may not know exactly what, but something is going on. As you can imagine, “taking their licenses away” is not a simple or straightforward proposition. The actual licenses are held by many individual local stations, not the main networks, and there is a long statutory window before they can be canceled. But still.

The possibilities include everything from permanently breaking the networks’ news cartel by re-allocating broadcast spectrum for more productive purposes, to disciplining the networks somehow after their reprehensible, lopsided campaign performance with resulting commitment to stop doing things like cover Trump’s pardons fifteen times more than Bidens’.

In other words, this is Trump’s chance to deliver generational change. We’ll see where it goes. But it’s bold, boisterous, and let’s face it—the Trump Show promises to be far more entertaining than anything else on broadcast television.

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Yesterday, during a Sunday golf outing between the seventh and eighth holes, Trump effortlessly ended an emerging South American rebellion and schooled its rebellious socialist strongman. The New York Times reported the story under the headline, “Colombia Agrees to Accept Deportation Flights After Trump Threatens Tariffs.” As the sub-headline succinctly summarized, “The country’s ‘leader,’ Gustavo Petro, backed down after a clash with President Trump, which started when Mr. Petro turned back U.S. military planes carrying deportees.”

At one point during President Petro’s puny, three-hour rebellion, he defiantly tweeted, and I am not making this up: “I don't shake hands with white slavers!” Petro, a former communist guerrilla, must have learned to talk like that in a jungle camp somewhere. But set his vocabulary aside.

The rebellion started earlier—in midair. Two military cargo planes crammed with Petro’s criminal comrades were en route from the U.S., providing Petro’s bandits with free one-way tickets to their South American rainforests of origin, where the vines grow thick and the rule of law is thinner than a mosquito’s wing.

Trump’s new Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained, “Colombian President Petro had authorized the flights and provided all needed authorizations, and then canceled his authorization when the planes were in the air.”

You’d think they’d be grateful for another free, taxpayer-funded flight. Apparently not. Petro was obviously testing Trump, and it obviously backfired badly.

Trump, who was playing golf at the time, immediately took to Truth Social, where with a few taps of the thumb, he dropped rhetorical napalm on the Columbian communistas:

Trump’s Truthed threat of sanctions, visa suspensions, tariffs, and travel bans was like using a machete to kill a spider. A rebellious communista spider, but still only a spider. Like that, the rebellion ended before it had even properly began. Petro, whose approval rating is floating in the camp latrine at a pathetic 34%, promptly caved.

Trump’s terrific new White House press secretary tweeted that Comrade Petro had immediately conceded to all terms: unconditional surrender.

President Petro, suddenly helpful, even offered his own presidential plane to help repatriate the Columbian criminals. I say let’s take him up on it. That seems much more fair to me.

These countries shouldn’t just accept their criminals back. They should have to come and get them. Use your own planes.

I couldn’t confirm this, but credible commenters suggested that the threatened visa sanctions on Columbia’s élite class were what did the trick so quickly, promptly watering down spicy South American passions — and that they were Secretary Rubio’s idea. If so, it’s a great sign that Trump picked the right man for the job.

🔥 Two quick points. First, it is worth noting that the Democrats, in their furious fervor to get Putin!, lovingly built the multi-armed sanctions spanking-machine that President Trump just effortlessly activated against the Columbians from his golf cart. Thanks, Democrats!

Second—and finally—it all happened within a few hours on a Sunday. The military flights, Rubio’s quick work, Trump’s involvement, and the White House press office all worked together seamlessly—on the weekend—to squash a nascent South American rebellion before it could even get out of the jungle.

Now, try to imagine sleepy Joe Biden handling a crisis like this. Actually, on second thought, don’t try to imagine it. I wouldn’t want to put you through that kind of suffering.

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Ever striving for fairness, C&C is committed to publishing federal employees speaking for themselves about all the interesting and challenging new changes coming to their personal work situations. Last week, we heard from Princess Nose Ring. This morning, C&C is pleased to present Totally Not Privileged Sally, whose disability is an allergy to the very idea of working at the office:

CLIP: Federal worker mad about losing telework privileges (adult language) (1:23).

After complaining bitterly for how it affects herself for most of the clip, Sally threw in that she feels worst for the parents who are federal workers, who will “now have to find child care.” Wait, what? It seemed like Sally was saying she knows people who are combining working for the federal government with caring for their own kids during the workday, but that can’t be right. Can it?

Let’s give Sally the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she meant something else. I have no idea what, but I suppose it’s possible. I hope so.

Anyway, I couldn’t find which agency set the March 10th telework deadline, so Sally will remain safely anonymous. We encourage like-minded federal employees to vent and let everyone know how they feel through these kinds of public social media tirades. It will soon be much more helpful than you think.

There’s seems to be something to outraged response to canceling remote work. Teleworking seems to be much more important to progressive-minded federal employees than I would ever have guessed. For example, last week Senator Chuck Schumer wildly told the website Government Executive, “Getting rid of telework just means you want to take a dagger to the heart of federal workers and the federal government.”

A dagger! To the heart! Of the federal government! What on Earth is that man blabbering about? I don’t understand it, but ending telework is obviously hurting them badly.

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So far, so good. The nation seems pleased with Trump’s historic, off-the-chain first week. It’s almost like we hated DEI to start with. Watch this smug CNN anchoress rolling her eyes so much she practically severed her optic nerve being forced to hear about how Trump’s approval rating has skyrocketed to record-setting levels:

CLIP: CNN discusses Trump’s record approval and body language (1:16).

For maximum entertainment, carefully watch her anguished body language and listen to her shrill tone of voice.

🔥 The next five days will be a massive week for confirmation hearings. The New York Sun ran the story this morning headlined, “Remaining Trump Nominees Prepare for Bruising Confirmation Fights, with Gabbard, Kennedy, and Patel Sitting for Hearings.”

Tulsi Gabbard (nominated for Director of National Intelligence), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Secretary of Health and Human Services), and Kash Patel (Director of the FBI), are all scheduled for contentious public confirmation hearings this week.

Kennedy’s committee hearing is set for Wednesday. Gabbard and Patel are scheduled for confirmation hearings on Thursday.

It is probably a good sign that the New York Times called Mike Pence’srelentless but tone-deaf battle to stop Kennedy’s nomination a “lonely crusade:”

Likewise, the New York Times’ banal and uncontroversial story this morning on Tulsi Gabbard focused on her atypical childhood religious beliefs, and was headlined “Tulsi Gabbard’s Unorthodox Path to Trump’s Intelligence Team.” It was hardly an anti-Gabbard jeremiad.

As for Kash, Trump’s controversial and outspoken nominee for FBI Director, he seems even more secure. There hasn’t been a major media hit piece about the FBI nominee for three days. And last week, Face the Nation reported, “Sen. Lindsey Graham says he is ‘ready to vote for Kash Patel’ for FBI director.” If Kash has got Lindsey Graham, he’s probably in good shape.

Don’t confuse these public hearings for the final votes. The hearings are a necessary pre-requisite for holding the vote, but the floor votes are separately scheduled. It’s kind of crazy; the Senate’s official online calendar is practically just an empty form; things are apparently so fluid that there isn’t even time to update the website.

The Senators are working, though. On Saturday morning, for example, the Senate voted to confirm South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as the new Secretary of Homeland Security. On Saturday.

This week promises to be another remarkable and historic national moment. We’ll watch it together.

Have a magnificent Monday! C&C will be back with another roundup of essential news and commentary tomorrow morning, right here, right in time for your coffee.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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