An Audience of One

There's nothing subtle about these boot-licking sycophants

Mar 19, 2026

Kristi Noem tried, but didn’t get it. He is all that matters. Stealing the spotlight buys a one way ticket to Loosersville. The Boss didn’t dig the self-promotional videos she spent $220M of our money on, that, as Senator John Kennedy (R-Huckelberry) regarded as doing more to promote Kristi Noem than the Department of Homeland Security.

The others get it. He’s the star. The only star. The Secretary of Defense dips into the bravado of his Fox News background to present a roaring lion, never mind that real lions don’t need to roar. The Boss likes the manly display of vindictiveness. All Hegseth’s talk about The “Warrior Ethos” and how we have no mercy, is this weird mix of macho cosplay and TV anchor eye-contact.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has turned the Justice Department into the President’s personal retribution machine. She mounts the podium to speak directly to the Boss. She could use a telephone, but he likes to see her go after his enemies on TV. It’s unimportant that her investigations go nowhere. Sure, no indictment, but hassle, humiliation, and the cost of lawyers, brings the same retributive glee.

To impress the Boss, she shows up in Congress with a burn book. She never answers a question, instead throwing insults that amount to little more than schoolyard taunts apparently written by the staff at Bazooka Joe’s. He likes having feisty Pam channel him.

Lately, FCC Chair Brendan Carr is getting in on the act. After issuing empty threats to Disney over Jimmy Kimmel’s monologues that lampooned the absurdity and danger of this presidency, he has been in the news very recently threatening to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war in Iran. After President Trump called related reports “fake news,” Carr dutifully mounted his hobby horse and talked gangster-tough, even though he has no power to abrogate the First Amendment—yet.

Unable to stop comedians and reporters from speaking freely, they are settling for Hungary-style media consolidation thanks to their very rich friends, the Ellisons, who now control CBS News and TikTok, where 20% of Americans get their news. We’ve all heard Trump rail against news coverage that either he doesn’t like, or that says anything unflattering about him. His favorite hobby horse is CNN, which the Ellisons will soon control through their next acquisition, the storied Warner Bros studios. The Wall Street Journal, reports that, “David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner Bros. Discovery, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN.” As Pete Hegseth put it, “”The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

They got CBS because previous owner, Shari Redstone, wanted to sell, and Paramount wanted to buy. The Trump administration extracted a cool $16M from her to get the deal done. It was a two-step transaction: Redstone sells to Paramount and Paramount sells to David Ellison’s Skydance.

Why did Redstone’s CBS pay $16 million to get the deal done? Because the administration made the mob-like demand that she pay a “fine,” and promise to end all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Stephen Colbert called it what it was, a “big fat bribe,” and was fired for his trouble.

David’s father, Larry Ellison, the second richest man in America, is long time Trump benefactor. Trump was thrilled with the deal, saying, “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” The first “right thing” they did was hire right-wing opinion journalist, Bari Weiss, wildly overpaying her the kingly sum of $150 million for her barely profitable online opinion journal, “The Free Press.” (I once wrote for her when she was editing the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section. It was a deeply unpleasant experience.) Trump was sure that CBS would soon become, “fairer.” He praised the acquisition, saying he was sure the combo had “great potential.”

It was very shortly thereafter that Weiss—a person with zero experience in television or hard news—eighty-sixed the Sharyn Alfonsi 60 Minutes story on the brutal ECOT prison in El Salvador. The internal backlash was immediate. Alfonsi sent Weiss a public memo, which I assume was originally written on asbestos paper because it was a three-alarm flamer, dressing her down (nice touch, that—reprimanding your new boss), and wondering why she had changed the broadcast schedule at the last minute.

Keep in mind that this is a reality television presidency. The boss is said to watch Fox News all day, and we know he’s tight with Chris Ruddy’s hard-right NewsMax, and that he has given a front row seat at White House briefings to the sycophantic One America News Network.

One wonders what becomes of Paramount/CBS’s Comedy Central (The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, and South Park) and HBO (Last Week With John Oliver) under the Ellisons.

Those channels speak to an audience larger than one—for now.