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    Fox Corp chief told Sean Hannity that Trump could not go on air in 2020 if he attacked network

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    New revelations about the tense relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump in the fall of 2020 have emerged in a trove of thousands of court documents released on Sunday as part of a massive defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.One exchange showed that Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, told star anchor Sean Hannity in a 1 October 2020 text chain that Trump could not appear on Fox again if he attacked the network.“Sean, sorry, but the president is not coming back on air if he uses it to attack us,” Murdoch wrote to a group that also included his father, Rupert, and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. “It is the same rule we have with the other side. This is a golden rule,” signing the message with “Thx L.” (In a 1 October 2020 interview with Hannity, Trump said Fox was “a much different place than it used to be”.)Hannity’s response to Murdoch’s message was redacted. The situation got worse in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when many Fox News supporters turned against the network, including Trump himself, leading to something of an existential crisis at the long-dominant channel.In a separate correspondence after the November 2020 presidential election, after many Trump supporters had grown angry at Fox News over its call of the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, Hannity acknowledged the anger from the president’s side. “Trump people hate Fox,” he wrote to a producer. “Hate hate hate.”While Fox publicly stood behind its Arizona call in the face of internal and external blowback, according to a 6 November 2020 email from Scott, Lachlan Murdoch said that Fox should consider reversing its call of the state of Arizona for Biden if his margin fell below 1% of the vote. “I’m not recommending we do that at this time,” Scott said.The documents released on Sunday are copies of the exhibits that were cited in previous filings between the parties. They include both longer versions of previously cited conversations and many new internal text messages and email exchanges that have not previously been made public.In a previously unreported 23 November 2020 email to his son, Rupert Murdoch suggested they chat about the viewer backlash against Fox News. “Getting killed in audience numbers,” he wrote. “All day long. We have to keep our nerve but worth a discussion. Won’t hurt subscriber revenue, but will soon cut into [advertisements].” Lachlan Murdoch wrote that he would call his father the following morning. “Agree re FNC,” he wrote. “Keeping me awake at night.”In another previously unreported 21 January 2021 email to his son Lachlan, Rupert wrote that he was “still getting criticism for [Fox News Channel]. Saying leading voices encouraged stolen election bullshit and pushed Jan 6 rally.” In the same thread, Murdoch talked about ousting business network host Lou Dobbs. “Just take him off the air and negotiate later,” he wrote. Dobbs’s show was cancelled the following month.The elder Murdoch also talked about hiring former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, saying that it’s “hard to attack a Black woman”.The documents released on Sunday also included a version of Smartmatic’s deposition of Rupert Murdoch. When asked by a Smartmatic lawyer whether he took any steps “to make sure that hosts with shows on Fox News Media did not endorse claims about the 2020 election being stolen,” Rupert Murdoch responded: “No. No.”“I was very happy [with] the way Fox News was handling it,” Rupert Murdoch said of the network’s post-election coverage.Rupert Murdoch also acknowledged that Fox News made a decision to “pivot” after the election by “moving away from our support of Trump”. But he said it was difficult to do so. “Our very large audience tended to be Trump supporters,” he said. “We didn’t want to upset them totally. That, we did before. They’d been attacking us.”Murdoch also affirmed that he believed Trump’s claims of a stolen election contributed to the January 6 US Capitol attack – though he denied it was a “riot” and said it was “intended to be just be a rally outside the Capitol”.In his own deposition, Lachlan Murdoch said he didn’t think Fox News did anything to “endorse” claims of election fraud made by Trump’s supporters. He also re-affirmed the journalistic value of covering the president’s election fraud claims. “I can’t imagine a more newsworthy story than the sitting president of the United States calling into question the election results,” he said, according a transcript of his deposition.“We did not make the allegations against Smartmatic. The president and his lawyers and associates made the allegations against Smartmatic,” Lachlan Murdoch said. “We reported those allegations, which I believe were incredibly newsworthy. So we did not make an apology for reporting the sitting president’s allegations about a voting system.”Smartmatic was indicted by the Department of Justice last month as part of an investigation into bribery in the Philippines. The company denies the charges, calling the indictment “targeted, political, and unjust”.Fox News has strenuously denied Smartmatic’s claims and said the company has vastly overstated its value.“The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech,” a Fox News spokesperson said. “Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic being criminally charged with bribery in the Philippines and the Government’s motion to include evidence of Smartmatic’s business dealings in Venezuela and Los Angeles County, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”Fox had petitioned the judge in the case to delay the trial, pending the criminal case against Smartmatic, but on Monday that effort was denied.“Today’s decision is an important victory for Smartmatic as we progress in our efforts to hold Fox accountable for its lies,” a Smartmatic spokesperson said. “The court made clear that Fox’s attempts to delay accountability won’t work, and its day of reckoning is coming.”Both parties are tentatively scheduled to argue their case for summary judgement next month. 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      Meet the conservative lawyer causing headaches for major news networks

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      In just 14 months, Daniel Suhr, the 40-year-old president of a two-person, Chicago-based, conservative legal organization called the Center for American Rights, has emerged as a thorn in the side of the major US broadcast news networks at a time when they face both financial and political vulnerabilities.Suhr has had a key ally in Brendan Carr, who was hand-picked by Donald Trump to serve as the chair of the powerful Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the Trump administration has sought new avenues to take on the mainstream media. Carr has resuscitated several complaints that were filed by Suhr and dismissed at the end of Joe Biden’s administration and has seemingly factored in Suhr’s suggestions when reviewing media mergers.One of those complaints, in October 2024, dealt with the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then vice-president Kamala Harris. It preceded by about two weeks a $10bn lawsuit by Trump against CBS that made similar claims and upended the political-media world for the next nine months. Suhr’s complaint led to CBS’s unprecedented decision to release the full, unedited transcript and video library from the Harris interview under pressure from Carr. And when Carr’s FCC ultimately approved Paramount’s long-delayed merger with Skydance Media in July, it included conditions that Suhr had asked for: the appointment of an ombudsman to handle complaints of bias at CBS News and the elimination of all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.“I think the commission did a great job in the final order,” Suhr said in a recent sit-down with the Guardian. “The commission’s order said that Paramount committed to news that was ‘fair, unbiased, and fact-based.’ I think those are great words. I would love to see all of our news be fair, unbiased and fact-based. I think that articulation of the standard is in many ways the fruition of what started with the one complaint.”It’s all a bit of a whirlwind for Suhr, who filed his first media complaint in September 2024. Critics of the way that Carr has used the commission’s limited regulatory oversight over the content of television networks to exert pressure have some questions – and some concerns – about how Suhr suddenly became such a key player in the administration’s regulatory apparatus, even as they say he’s very pleasant to deal with.“When you talk to him, he seems like a very reasonable, very articulate, smart guy,” said Gigi Sohn, a longtime consumer advocate who was nominated by former president Joe Biden to serve on the FCC but did not ultimately do so. “It’s just kind of curious that this person has come out of nowhere and is so active and is so tied with the chair. I think it raises questions that should be answered.”One of those questions is whether Suhr is taking his cues directly from Carr, who shares his belief that the mainstream media is biased in favor of Democrats.Over coffee recently in Washington DC, where Suhr had traveled to attend a dinner hosted by the conservative Federalist Society, he sought to explain how exactly his organization became a central actor in the conservative case against alleged bias in the media – and how he became what Sohn called “a cog in the Carr wheel”, though Suhr sees it differently.While Suhr said he’s a “big fan” of Carr, he pushed back on the notion that he works hand-in-glove with him. “I don’t run my complaints by [Carr] ahead of time,” he said. “I don’t run my complaints by his staff ahead of time.”Still, it’s undeniable that Suhr “has the ear of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on a number of policy issues,” as former telecommunications association executive Ted Hearn wrote last week, noting that he had endorsed the $34.5bn merger between Charter Communications and Cox Communications.Suhr said he has only met Carr once – though he did not disclose that his one meeting had occurred just hours before meeting with the Guardian for an interview. Carr posted a photo of the two of them on X, writing that Suhr is “doing fantastic work advancing the public interest in media policy”. (Carr did not respond to a text message seeking further comment about Suhr.)Asked about it later, Suhr explained the visit as just a “get-to-know-you” session – they didn’t talk about pending cases, which means there won’t be an official notice of their meeting – just a photo that Carr posted on X.In late September 2024, Suhr filed a complaint against ABC over its handling of the presidential debate it hosted between Trump and Harris. There was also a complaint against NBC over a pre-election appearance by Harris on Saturday Night Live,which Suhr argued was a violation of the equal time rule.Both complaints were closed at the end of Biden’s term by then-FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel and then reopened by Carr – though the chair chose not to bring back a petition to deny a local Fox station a license because of the Fox News Channel’s coverage of the 2020 election.“The dismissals by the FCC were so obviously correct under established precedent that I became a little curious about who would be dumb enough to file these things,” said Robert Corn-Revere, a first amendment litigator for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, when asked how he first became aware of Suhr. “There is no reason whatsoever for these proceedings to still be open and there was never a basis for them to be open in the first place.” (“[Corn-Revere] is entitled to his opinion,” Suhr responded. “I think our results speak for themselves.”)When ABC indefinitely suspended late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s show on 17 September Suhr was all over that as well. Earlier that day, he had filed a complaint to the FCC seeking consequences for ABC unless Kimmel’s show was taken off the air. That followed another complaint about two weeks earlier accusing Kimmel of using his show to benefit Democrats.Critics wonder whether Carr is keeping the complaints open to serve as a potential pressure point for networks – like NBC owner Comcast – that might need the FCC’s blessing for future transactions.Despite their issues with Suhr’s filings, which often allege violations of the FCC’s poorly defined “news distortion” standard, both Sohn and Corn-Revere acknowledged that there is nothing unusual about an outside organization filing motions that are aligned with an FCC chair’s priorities. But, Corn-Revere said, “I’ve just never seen it to be this sort of open and obvious as is going on now.”While he’s relatively new to taking on the media, Suhr is no stranger to politics. After graduating with a law degree in 2008, Suhr spent several years managing the Federalist Society’s law school chapters before joining the administration of Scott Walker, the Republican former Wisconsin governor . He then became a public interest lawyer, working for an organization called the Liberty Justice Center before forming the Center for American Rights with his partner Patrick Hughes. It was Hughes, who leads CAR’s board, who first suggested that Suhr should look into ways to combat what he saw as mainstream media misinformation after watching the ABC News-hosted presidential debate in September.“It was an unfair debate – the moderators were clearly in favor of the Democrats – and it made me think: ‘How can this be?’” Hughes recalled. “And so I said to Daniel: ‘We’ve got to do something about this. What are the standards under which the FCC regulates this?’ Because it can’t be right.”Hughes said he’s been pleased with the impact that Suhr has been able to have. “He’s brilliant,” he said. “He’s a terrific person and a fabulous lawyer and he’s doing a great job.”Sohn agreed that Suhr has “obviously been very successful” in his efforts.Suhr’s complaint against CBS is still open, even though the relief sought – forcing the network to release the 60 Minutes transcript – was already granted months ago. When asked recently why the FCC has not acted on complaints, Carr said they are still being investigated.Either way, Suhr is feeling better about CBS News these days, particularly after the selection of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief and the appointment of a prominent Washington conservative, Kenneth R Weinstein, as ombudsman.“We appreciate the change that is happening. We applaud it. We’re going to continue to be vigilant for consumers, but so far I’ve been thrilled,” Suhr said. “We just want journalists to be better journalists.” More

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      Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back

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      The richest man on earth owns X.The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS, and could soon own Warner Bros, which owns CNN.The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.The fourth-richest man owns the Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.Another billionaire owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic – some might say sinister – reason.If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats, and discouraging any attempt to – for example – tax away your wealth.You also have Donald Trump to contend with. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post defended the razing of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump his giant ballroom – without disclosing that Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom’s funding. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s defense department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors, but failed to mention Amazon’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington DC’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington DC market.These breaches are inexcusable.It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle and the second-richest person in the world. Ellison is a longtime Trump donor who also, according to court records, participated in a phone call to discuss how his 2020 election defeat could be contested.In June 2025, Ellison and Oracle were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington. At the time, Larry and his son David, founder of Skydance Media, were waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve their $8bn merger with Paramount Global, owner of CBS News.In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes resigned, citing concerns over the network’s ability to maintain its editorial independence, and revealing pressure by Paramount to tamp down stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.In July, Paramount paid $16m to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against CBS and canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Three weeks after the settlement was announced, Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, chair of the FCC, approved the Ellisons’ deal, making David chief executive of the new media giant Paramount Skydance and giving him control of CBS News.In October, David made the anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss the CBS News editor-in-chief, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or news. Earlier this month, it was revealed that CBS News heavily edited Trump’s latest 60 Minutes interview, cutting his boast that the network “paid me a lotta money”.I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News – the home of Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite – was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS had independent responsibilities to the American public.It is impossible to know the full extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by the media-owning billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.But what we do know is that billionaire media owners like Musk, Bezos, Ellison and Murdoch are businessmen first and foremost. Their highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. They know Trump can wreak havoc on their businesses by imposing unfriendly FCC rulings, enforcing labor laws against them or denying them lucrative government contracts.And in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, with a thin-skinned president who is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.What to do about this?At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.A second suggestion (if and when the US has a saner government) is that anti-monopoly authorities not approve the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently than the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or one developing small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.A third suggestion is to read and support media such as the Guardian, which is not beholden to a wealthy owner or powerful advertiser and does not compromise its integrity to curry favor with the powerful.To the contrary, the Guardian aims to do what every great source of news and views should be doing, especially in these dark times: illuminate, enlighten and elucidate. This is why I avidly read each day’s edition and why I write a column for it.As the Washington Post’s slogan still says, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of the US’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.We must fight to get our democracy back. Supporting the Guardian is one good place to begin.You can support the Guardian’s year-end appeal here. All gifts are gratefully received, but a recurring contribution – even a small monthly amount – is most impactful, helping sustain our work throughout the year ahead. It takes just 37 seconds to give. Thank you. More

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      From CBS to TikTok, US media are falling to Trump’s allies. This is how democracy crumbles | Owen Jones

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      Democracy may be dying in the US. Whether the patient receives emergency treatment in time will determine whether the condition becomes terminal. Before Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, I warned of “Orbánisation” – in reference to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. There, democracy was not extinguished by firing squads or the mass imprisonment of dissidents, but by slow attrition. The electoral system was warped, civil society was targeted and pro-Orbán moguls quietly absorbed the media.Nine months on, and Orbánisation is in full bloom across the Atlantic. Billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, and his filmmaker son, David, have become blunt instruments in this process. Trump boasts they are “friends of mine – they’re big supporters of mine”. Larry Ellison, second only to Elon Musk as the world’s richest man, has poured tens of millions into Republican coffers. Shortly after the 2020 election, he joined a call that discussed challenging the legitimacy of the vote. His son, David, has a history of backing Democrats – but at one time, so did Trump, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.In August, David Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global with financial support from his father, leaving him as chair and CEO of the new entity. Beyond a vast slice of Hollywood, this acquisition brought control of CBS News – one of the US’s “big three” networks. During the last election, Trump demanded CBS lose its broadcasting licence over alleged political bias and even sued the network over what he called a flattering edit of Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview. His mood has since improved. Ellison is “going to do the right thing” with the network, Trump crowed when its ownership shifted. His optimism was swiftly vindicated: a Trump appointee was installed as CBS’s ombudsman to monitor “bias”, and Bari Weiss – a former Democrat turned anti-woke crusader – was made editor-in-chief.Now, Trump officials are briefing that they are also in favour of Paramount Skydance buying Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company of HBO and CNN. “Who owns Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is very important to the administration,” a senior Trump official told the conservative New York Post. The pro-Trump newspaper states that rival bidders will face “regulatory hurdles”, with WBD’s CEO forced to consider the Trump administration’s willingness to crack down on what it sees as rampant leftwing bias across the mainstream media.Larry Ellison, meanwhile, also leads a group of investors set to take over TikTok’s US operations, with other partners reportedly including Rupert Murdoch and Abu Dhabi’s government-owned investment company. Although much of Trump’s own criticism of TikTok has focused on China, key Maga figures such as Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio have called for the app to be banned over “anti-Israel” bias, and for shifting younger Americans’ sympathies towards Palestinians. Ellison is a fervent supporter of Israel, and has previously donated millions to its military through the non-profit Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. They will be pleased to have him in charge.In 2015, Safra Catz, Oracle’s Israeli-American executive chair, and former CEO, reportedly told former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in an email that: “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.” Oracle will have oversight of the TikTok algorithm.But this goes much further than the Ellisons’ acquisitions. Trump threatened Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he crossed him. The social media mogul has little to worry about now, having done his best to ingratiate himself with the administration. He abandoned third-party factchecking in the US, dropped restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, and appointed Trump supporters as head of global affairs and to the executive board. At the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, columnist Karen Attiah says she was fired for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns” after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.Liberal comedian Jimmy Kimmel had his ABC show suspended after the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission demanded action. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting – long deemed hostile by Trump – has been defunded and shut down. The administration took control over which media organisations have access to the White House, ejecting the Associated Press. US media outlets were stripped of their Pentagon credentials after refusing to only report officially authorised information issued by the Department of Defense. Trump’s lawsuits against media organisations have further cowed them.It goes far beyond media control. Witness Trump deploying the national guard to Democratic strongholds and centralising control over elections. Republicans have launched new gerrymandering offensives, while demanding the denaturalisation and deportation of socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, as Trump threatens to defund the city if he wins. In Hungary, too, Orbán slashed funding for opposition mayoralties. Opponents are threatened with arrest: the arch warmonger John Bolton may be politically loathsome, but the charges filed against him are the harbinger of worse to come. Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon claims there is a plan to circumvent the constitution to allow his former boss to take a third term. We could go on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS democracy has always been heavily flawed. It is so rigged in favour of wealthy elites that a detailed academic study back in 2014 found that the political system is rigged in favour of what the economic elites want. Yet because, unlike Hungary, the US has no history of dictatorship, with a system of supposed checks and balances, some felt it could never succumb to tyranny. Such complacency has collided with brutal reality. In just nine months, the US has been dragged towards an authoritarian abyss. A warning: Trump has 39 months left in office.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist More

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      ‘He may be watching’: Mamdani on Fox News speaks directly to Trump

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      Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York, stepped into the lion’s den on Wednesday when he sat for an interview with Fox News, the rightwing news organization that has spent weeks demonizing him and his democratic socialist goals.Speaking to host Martha MacCallum, Mamdani was asked about funding for his proposals, which include freezing increases on rent-stabilized apartments, providing free buses and offering free childcare – and whether other services would be cut to achieve those goals.“I don’t think we have to cut,” Mamdani said. “I’ve spoken about raising taxes on the wealthiest. And, frankly, this is an issue that we have here in New York City, and, frankly, even across this country.”Mamdani said he had spoken to people who voted for Donald Trump in New York who told him it was the “cost of living” that “drove them to vote” for the president.Mamdani said that, despite that, “what we’re seeing time and time again is we’re more focused on the question of billionaires and the most profitable corporations than we are on people who can’t even afford to make ends meet in the city”.Following his surprise victory over Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, Mamdani has for months led the polls to be New York’s next mayor. A survey released by Quinnipiac last week showed Mamdani winning 46% of the vote to the former New York governor’s 33%. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, was at 22%.That rise has brought attention from outlets such as Fox News, which has closely covered Mamdani, sometimes publishing multiple news stories on him a day. Jesse Watters, the network’s primetime host, has been a frequent critic, describing Mamdani as a “communist”, which he is not, and calling him “Kamala Harris with a beard”, while Sean Hannity suggested that the rise of Mamdani, who is Muslim, is evidence that “an extremism is taking root right before your very eyes”.In an interview that rehashed several rightwing critiques of Mamdani, MacCallum suggested he may lack the qualifications for the role. “President Trump said that you never worked a day in your life,” MacCallum told Mamdani, before asking what qualifies him to run the city.In response, Mamdani spoke directly into the camera, alluding to how the outgoing mayor, Eric Adams, bowed to pressure from the Trump administration to cooperate on immigration crackdowns – before the Trump-led justice department dropped a federal corruption case against him.“I want to take this moment, because you spoke about President Trump, and he may be watching right now, and I just want to speak directly to the president,” Mamdani said.“I will not be a mayor like Mayor [Eric] Adams, who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail. I won’t be a disgraced governor like Andrew Cuomo, who will call you to ask how to win this election. I can do those things on my own. I will, however, be a mayor who is ready to speak at any time to lower the cost of living.“That’s the way that I’m going to lead this city. That’s the partnership I want to build, not only with Washington DC, but [with] anyone across this country.”The interview came as Mamdani prepared for a debate with Cuomo and Sliwa on Thursday night. Adams suspended his re-election campaign in late September.Cuomo, who has centered his campaign on reducing crime, will likely seek to contrast his decades of experience in politics with Mamdani’s newcomer status. The former governor, who resigned in 2021 after he was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, has run numerous ads attacking Mamdani.The issue of the Israel-Hamas peace deal is likely to come up, given Cuomo’s strong support for Israel and Mamdani’s opposing stance. Mamdani has criticized Israel’s war in Gaza and called the bombing of the territory a “genocide”. Mamdani was asked questions about the region on Wednesday, including whether he would give credit to Trump for the fledgling deal.Mamdani, stressing that his focus would be on New York rather than international politics, said he was thankful for the ceasefire, adding: “I have hope that it will actually endure and that it will be lasting.”“I think it’s too early to [give credit],” Mamdani said. “But if it proves to be something that is lasting, something that is durable, then I think that that’s where you give credit.” More

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      Why is this Fox News host speculating about AOC’s sex life? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and United States homeland security adviser, is one of the most influential people in the Trump administration. He is also such a hate-filled little man that members of his own family are publicly rebuking him.During Donald Trump’s first term, in 2018, Miller’s uncle, Dr David Glosser, wrote a piece for Politico calling Miller an “immigration hypocrite”. Glosser noted that if Miller’s hardline immigration policies “had been in force a century ago, our family [Jewish refugees who fled to the US from Europe to avoid persecution] would have been wiped out”.Then, in July, a woman called Alisa Kasmer, Miller’s cousin and former babysitter, wrote a viral Facebook post calling the Trump aide “the face of evil”. Miller’s cruelty, she said, left her feeling “ashamed and shattered”.While some of his extended family can’t seem to stand him, Miller does have a very enthusiastic cheerleader in the form of the Fox News host Jesse Watters. Last October, Watters claimed that his show’s audience believes that Miller is “some sort of sexual matador” and asked Miller to comment on this. The Maga-dor responded by telling young men to “be the alpha … show that you are not a beta … Be a proud and loud Trump supporter and your dating life will be fantastic.” This is terrible advice for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that gen Z women are the most liberal group in the US.I’m afraid it doesn’t end there; a couple of weeks ago, the Fox News host had Miller’s wife, Katie (a Maga bigwig in her own right), on his show to chat about how sexy Stephen is. “What is it like being married to such a sexual matador?” Watters joked. Very inspiring, apparently; he wakes up every morning excited about how he is going to “defeat the left”.It doesn’t even end there. This week, Watters once again sang his favourite man’s praises on TV, calling Miller a “policy savant”. He added: “Men who are high-value men, like Stephen Miller, take risks. They’re brave, they’re unafraid, they’re confident and they’re on a mission. And they have younger wives with beautiful children.”Watters went on to claim that the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “wants to sleep with Miller … it is so obvious”. The whole spiel was so weird that even Watters’s colleague, Greg Gutfeld, appeared disturbed. “That was pretty creepy,” Gutfeld said.While Watters doesn’t seem to need an excuse to praise Miller, this week’s episode wasn’t entirely unprompted. Rather, Watters was reacting to an Instagram video in which Ocasio-Cortez called Miller a clown and urged people to laugh at Maga.“Miller looks like he is so mad that he is 4’10” that he’s taking that anger out at any other population possible,” AOC said in the video. “Laugh at them! Laugh at them!”It’s not particularly clever to mock someone’s height. (AOC has since said she loves “short kings” and was talking about how “big or small someone is on the inside”.) Nevertheless, the lawmaker is absolutely correct that the way to get under the skin of people in Maga-land is to laugh at them. Ghouls like Trump and Miller don’t care if you call them evil or hypocritical. They don’t care if you use facts and logic against them. What they care about is being laughed at. What they really can’t stand is being mocked. “Humor has long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism, noted last year after Democrats started calling Republicans “weird”.You can see how thin-skinned Maga is by the ridiculous amount of traction that AOC’s throwaway joke has had. Mediaite has reported that three primetime Fox News hosts factchecked Miller’s height: Watters, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. Ingraham even had Miller on her show and played the clip to him while he squirmed in discomfort. “What a train wreck, what a train wreck … that lady is a walking nightmare,” Miller replied. He also clarified that he is 5’10”. A very big boy.Steven Cheung, who is White House director of communications, also responded to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments with a post on his official Twitter account saying: “Sounds like @AOC is often used to the shorter things in life.” He added a pinching hand emoji, which is sometimes used to suggest a small penis.The Trump administration should not be underestimated by any means. They are organized, they are ruthless, and they are proving extremely effective at implementing their agenda. But while we shouldn’t underestimate Trumpers, it’s helpful to remember that they’re not invincible. AOC is right: we should laugh at them. It’s either laugh or cry.French appeals court increases sentence of Gisèle Pelicot rapistHusamettin Dogan contested his first conviction, telling the court Pelicot’s husband had invited him over so it was OK. The court found otherwise this week, increasing Dogan’s prison sentence to 10 years. Pelicot’s lawyer had told the court: “[C]onsent is personal, not delegated. Consent is obtained directly and not by proxy from a husband.”Women may carry a higher genetic risk of depressionNew research published in Nature Communications has found 16 genetic variants linked to depression in women, compared with eight in men.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLatvia may withdraw from international domestic violence treatyWomen’s rights activists protested outside the Latvian parliament this week following a decision by lawmakers last month to start a process that could lead to withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, which aims to standardize support for women who are victims of violence and to promote gender equality.Almost 55,000 preschool children in Gaza are acutely malnourishedThat’s according to a new study published in the Lancet, which shows a clear link between Israel’s aid blockade and malnutrition. Even if a ceasefire holds and adequate food is allowed into the strip, these kids will probably have serious poor long-term outcomes from being starved in their critical years. It is hard to defend deliberately starving babies – which is why Israel is spending hundreds of millions on propaganda efforts including, according to Drop Site News, $45m on a Google advertising campaign promoting Israeli government talking points.UK universities offered to spy on students on behalf of weapons companiesAccording to emails obtained by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates, a number of UK universities reassured arms companies worried about campus protests that they would monitor students’ social media accounts. Per the Guardian, one university “appeared to agree to a request from Raytheon UK, the British wing of a major US defence contractor, to ‘monitor university chat groups’ before a campus visit”.The week in pawtriarchyFrancine is a calico cat who lives at a Lowe’s home improvement store in Virginia. Or she did until she decided to jump on a truck and go on an out-of-state adventure. CCTV was scrutinized and thermal drones brought in to find Francine. She is now back in Virginia, delighting customers with her a-mew-sing antics. Cat-astrophe averted.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      A rightwing late-night show may have bombed – but the funding behind it is no laughing matter

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      A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.“For too long, the late-night talkers on network tv have filled the airwaves with progressive rants and outright mockery of anyone who espouses traditional American values,” the Ziklag email read.The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas, Ziklag wrote, will “change that forever”. The email said the show needed $400,000 to $500,000 to film five pilot episodes, “which will be presented to digital distributors, networks and tv ownership groups”.The Guardian sat through nearly four hours of the Talk Show, and found it to be an almost exact copy of existing late-night shows, just worse: with hack jokes about tired issues and has-been, conservative guests. The show was never picked up, presumably to the chagrin of Ziklag and its investors, who had lofty expectations.Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video instead.“Spoiler alert! The secular elites who currently reign over late-night tv are about to find out the joke’s on them!” Ziklag’s pitch email read. It lauded Metaxas, a conservative radio host and author who was an eager proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming: “His comedic bent has gone largely unnoticed until now that is…”Unfortunately, across the four pilots, Metaxas’s comedic bent was noticeable only by its absence.“Big news in the world of show business,” Metaxas began the first episode. “Harrison Ford will be returning for a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. In this one Harrison will find an ancient artifact … by looking in the mirror.”There were a few titters from the audience, and scattered applause. Metaxas, appearing nervous, continued with the one-liners:“Barbie’s longtime companion, Ken, just turned 61 years old. Yeah. And he said the perfect gift for his birthday would be to finally get a prostate.”This time there were some audible groans. Metaxas stuck at it.“In India, doctors removed 526 teeth from a seven-year-old boy’s mouth,” he chortled. “The boy is recovering nicely. However, the Tooth Fairy declared bankruptcy.”Ziklag claimed the show would welcome “guests who are routinely shadow banned on other talk shows”, and quoted Metaxas as saying: “It’s kind of like Stalin has air-brushed these people out of the culture.”But the common theme among the guests was that they had been naturally phased out of existing talkshows due to their irrelevance.The first episode featured an exclusive interview with Carrot Top, the 60-year-old prop comedian. Carrot Top showed Metaxas some of his props, including a bottle of Bud Light that had a torch in the bottom of it and a dinner plate that had a hole in it. Carrot Top managed to say absolutely nothing of interest during the three-minute tête-à-tête, before Metaxas cut back to the studio.“Tonight’s show is loaded with talent,” Metaxas announced to the live audience. The guests included a TikToker – “for our generation, Tic Tac was a breath mint”, Metaxas quipped – Tammy Pescatelli, a comedian who has been absent from the limelight for at least a decade; and Danny Bonaduce, best known for his work on the 1970s sitcom the Partridge Family.Throughout the episodes – as Metaxas sang a song with a terrified-looking Victoria Jackson, a self-described conservative Christian who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992 and has claimed Barack Obama is an “Islamic terrorist” – and as he continued with awful jokes about some scientists who had developed a robot that could build furniture but “cannot promise that the robot won’t swear”, it was hard to see what the point of this was.In its email, Ziklag said it was offering the opportunity to invest as part of the “Media Mountain”, a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate, a theology popular among the Christian right. The theology proposes that Christians should seek to take over seven spheres of influence in public life: religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment and business.Chris Himes, who produced the Talk Show, said the show was not intended to be a “rightwing late-night show”. The aim, Himes said, was “to create a broad, throwback late-night program for the entire country – not just one side”.“These are not partisan or ‘right-wing’ shows. Think Letterman or Dick Cavett in tone: humor first, with no space for snark or ‘clapter’,” he said in an email.“Sadly, much of late night over the past decade has shifted from being genuinely funny to becoming a vehicle for tribal signaling – even occasionally straying into messaging far beyond comedy. We believe the country deserves something better.”Himes added: “To be clear, a ‘right-wing’ late-night show would be a terrible idea. What we’re building is something more essential: a genuinely funny, unifying alternative.”In the pilot episodes, there were guests who were known for rightwing politics, but Metaxas largely didn’t ask them about those politics. In episode three, he seemed to decide he needed to at least say a bit of something to satisfy the rightwing donors funding this enterprise, but that came in the form of going over well-trodden ground about liberals.“Botanists have discovered a meat-eating plant in Canada,” Metaxas said in his intro. “Researchers determined that the plant started eating meat because it just got tired of explaining its vegan lifestyle.”He continued: “Detroit’s sanitation workers – I just read this – they’re threatening to go on strike. Detroit’s mayor said not to worry, because Detroit will continue to look and smell exactly the same.”Another quip ventured into current affairs: “Gas costs a fortune. It’s insane how much it costs. And who would have thought that the best deal at the Shell station would ever be the $3 microwave burrito?”Ziklag’s pitch to investors had promised big-name guests. It didn’t deliver apart from an interview – heavily touted by Metaxas – with film-maker Ron Howard. The interview turned out to be from a press junket, where directors or actors sit in a room for eight hours and basically anyone with a press pass can schedule time to question them.It’s unlikely Howard knew he was appearing on what Ziklag described as a “faith-friendly, late night alternative”, but that’s perhaps irrelevant, given networks clearly passed on what is a confused, drab copy of shows that are actually successful.But while Metaxas’s effort to shoehorn a conservative show into the mainstream may have been lamentable, the fact that wealthy rightwingers are attempting to do so should be cause for concern, given the threat television is under from Trump.Earlier this year, CBS scrapped the Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Colbert had repeatedly mocked Trump – weeks after CBS’s parent company settled a lawsuit with Trump. Trump has also called for late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, who have both criticized the president, to be fired, while the president has overseen NPR and PBS being stripped of funding, having decried “biased media”.The Talk Show was a terrible product, memorable only for dreadful humor and snooze-inducing interviews. In the current climate, however, it serves as a reminder that the right wing is waging a well-funded war on the media that is unlikely to end soon. More

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      Bari Weiss is a weird and worrisome choice as top editor for CBS News | Margaret Sullivan

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      If you’re old enough to have admired CBS in its heyday, watching its decline has been painful.Decades ago, it was dubbed the Tiffany Network – home of the great journalist Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”), and innovator of the top-flight magazine program, 60 Minutes.Even outside its news division, the network was a place where the variety-show host Ed Sullivan could break down racial exclusion by inviting outstanding Black entertainers to his Sunday night program; that was controversial in an era of intense racial turmoil. The CBS news department had some of the best journalists in the nation, and the corporation itself exuded a sense of public mission.But on Monday, when Bari Weiss was named editor-in-chief of CBS News, it was the latest turn in the network’s confounding departure from its roots.Given her lack of experience in news, “placing Weiss at or near the helm of a television news division makes no more sense than it would have, a generation ago, to have given such a role to William F Buckley of the National Review or Victor Navasky of The Nation,” wrote Richard Tofel, an astute media observer, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and ProPublica, mentioning conservative and liberal opinionators of their era.Weiss – a staunch Zionist and a fierce opponent of supposed wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives – famously left the New York Times opinion section, claiming she had been bullied by her colleagues for her beliefs. She started a Substack newsletter and eventually founded the wildly successful website Free Press.Her rise has been meteoric. She “has ascended the mountain of journalism on a slingshot”, Jessica Testa of the New York Times put it this week.To her many critics, her appointment was just one more step on the shameful path that CBS has trod since Donald Trump was elected to a second term.The network caved to the US president when its parent company, Paramount, settled a lawsuit it could have won, sending millions of dollars for a future presidential library. Trump claimed that he was harmed during last year’s presidential campaign by the editing (actually, quite routine) of a 60 Minutes interview of his then rival Kamala Harris. Not only did the company settle the case, but now it has decided not to edit taped interviews with political figures on its Sunday morning Face the Nation – a dubious idea at best, and another piece of capitulation to Trump.The longtime executive producer of 60 Minutes quit a few months ago, saying he feared the loss of his prized editorial independence; and the network’s evening newscast ratings continue to lag their competitors. Recently, the company named an ombudsman for CBS News – someone with no news experience – to monitor claims of bias, but with no arrangement to communicate regularly to the public, as normal news ombudsmen or public editors have.Others were much harsher than Tofel in their criticism, noting that Paramount paid an astonishing $150m for Weiss’s site, Free Press. Paramount is led these days by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people, and Weiss is very much his pick to led CBS News; the corporate press release said she will, among other things, “reshape editorial priorities”. She will report directly to Ellison, rather than to the CBS News president, a more traditional arrangement.“Like Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the deal can be understood as part of a broader elite project to smudge the lenses through which many people see the world,” wrote the Defector’s Patrick Redford. “By installing Weiss, the richest people in the world have taken another step toward ushering in the toothless, acquiescent future of mainstream media they’ve always wanted.”Certainly, that is something that Trump and his allies have worked relentlessly for.Redford called it “yet another victory of marketing over its natural enemy, journalism”.As she took the helm, Weiss sent around a friendly-sounding note to the news staff that had one particularly notable line. Among her “core journalistic values”, she wrote, is “journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny”.Sounds good, but the two parties are far from equal these days.“CBS should brace for a heavy dose of bothsiderism,” wrote Oliver Darcy in his Status newsletter, observing that the Free Press has, as its central thesis, “that Trump and his supporters are largely right about the cultural rot of the woke-elite” and liberal overreach (wokeness) is a bigger problem than Trump’s existential threats to American democracy.As independent media gains influence, it may not matter very much any more who leads a major TV network. Certainly, it matters far less now than in the years when CBS ruled the airwaves.But it is telling that Weiss – such a polarizing provocateur herself – has been chosen to reinvent the most mainstream of legacy networks at this fraught and dangerous time in the US.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Kimmel controversy highlights ‘wildly dangerous’ consolidation of TV broadcasting

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      If the controversy behind Jimmy Kimmel’s show is a series of dominoes that fell one after the other, from the late-night host making his comments on Charlie Kirk’s killing to ABC halting production of his show, the first domino arguably fell this summer.Months before Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) quietly announced it was seeking to make a major change to broadcasting rules.The change would primarily affect three companies that own more local TV stations than any other company: Sinclair Broadcasting, Nexstar Media Group and Gray Television Inc. All three companies own the maximum number of local TV stations that is legally permitted for a single company to own.That national cap is set by FCC rules and says a single company can’t reach more than 39% of the total national television audience.In June, the FCC announced that it was seeking public comment to raise the cap, which would allow the companies to acquire more local TV stations. In a filing to the FCC, media watchdog Free Press said that changing the national cap would be “wildly dangerous”.“Handing even more media control to a handful of conglomerates and billionaires already so dominant in the space is a wildly dangerous idea, no matter who holds the presidency,” the group said.But by August, Nexstar announced its intention to acquire its broadcast rival Tegna for $6.2bn.“The initiatives being pursued by the Trump administration offer local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the big tech and legacy big media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources,” Nexstar’s chief executive officer, Perry Sook, said at the time.Nexstar – already the largest operator of local television stations – oversees more than 200 owned and partner stations in 116 markets across the US. Tegna owns 64 news stations across 51 markets. The deal would be illegal under current FCC rules, as it would put Nexstar over the national cap.Immediately after Kimmel was taken off the air, multiple reports have noted that Donald Trump’s appointed FCC chair, Brendan Carr, blatantly threatened the companies that air Kimmel’s show.“When you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said on a podcast. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”Media experts called the move unprecedented.“The FCC is explicitly threatening companies that, if they don’t change their content in some way, they would suffer regulatory consequences,” said Gregory J Martin, a political economy professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who has researched the effect that media conglomeration has had on local TV news. “That just didn’t really happen before.”Soon after, Nexstar announced it would preempt Kimmel’s show. As a local TV station conglomerate, Nexstar partners with the “big four” networks – ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC – to run their content on its stations. This is where the term “affiliate” comes from. If a station is, for example, an ABC affiliate, that means that the TV station owner has partnered with ABC to run shows like Kimmel’s.That’s why Nexstar’s announcement was such a big deal. When it comes to Kimmel being broadcast on TV, ABC relies on these local TV station owners to get him on the air.After Nexstar’s announcement, ABC announced that it was indefinitely halting the production of Kimmel’s show.The backlash that ensued led to ABC announcing it would continue producing Kimmel’s show. But Nexstar and its competitor, Sinclair Broadcasting, both said they will continue to preempt the show, meaning 25% of TV viewers won’t be getting Kimmel’s show on TV.“Nexstar is continuing to evaluate the status of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on our ABC-affiliated local television stations, and the show will be preempted while we do so,” Nexstar said in a statement. “We are engaged in productive discussion with executives at the Walt Disney Company, with a focus on ensuring the program reflects and respects the diverse interests of the communities we serve.”To media watchdogs, the conflict highlights the size of the media conglomerates such as Nexstar, which critics argue have become too large and too powerful.“This has been a problem at the FCC for quite some time. We’ve been concerned for decades about what happens when you allow media companies to become too consolidated and too influential,” said Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They become beholden to political power because they have so many entanglements with government agencies regarding merger approvals [and] policy changes that they … soft-pedal their reporting when it comes to criticism of those in power,” he added.Historians often point to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which dramatically relaxed regulations limiting the number of TV and radio stations a single company could own. The law set the stage for media companies such as Nexstar and Sinclair to exist and own a massive number of local TV stations.Over the past few years, political experts have expressed concern that this consolidation has been negatively affecting the quality of local television news. Though the number of local TV news viewers has been declining, millions of Americans still rely on their local TV news. And the funding for these local TV broadcasts comes from the station owners such as Sinclair and Nexstar.The Kimmel affair is not the first time that the station owners have shown their political colors. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Sinclair directed its local news anchors to read identical scripts criticizing “fake” news stories and “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country”.Trump defended the decision: “So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke,” he wrote on what was then Twitter.When criticizing Kimmel, Carr said that the FCC has to ensure that broadcasters who are using public airwaves are operating in the “public interest”. Martin said that, typically, the “public interest” requirement refers to producing local TV news shows.“That’s how they satisfy their public obligation, by providing informative news shows. It’s never been on the table that they could be interpreted to mean they have to not criticize the president,” he said. “That’s a big, important change in how the FCC operates.”Karr, of Free Press, said that the media watchdog has made it clear, in a filing to the FCC, that the regulator would need congressional approval to change the national reach cap.“We need to be watching the FCC very carefully over the next couple of weeks to see how far Carr will go in removing this huge hurdle to the merger,” he said.The New York Post reported this week that there is also growing criticism of the Nexstar/Tegna deal from conservatives concerned that the Kimmel suspension is “nothing more than a ruse to convince the White House its programming is watchful of leftwing bias” in order to convince the FCC to pass a deal that will hand the media group too much power.When he went back on air on Tuesday, Kimmel took a direct jab at Carr in his monologue, which has now received over 20m views on YouTube. Kimmel quoted the threats Carr made to broadcast networks over his show and said it is “a direct violation of the first amendment [and] not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public”.“You almost have to feel sorry for him,” Kimmel said. “He did his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show.” More