Second Term, Third Act

Motivated by avarice and revenge, the President is making the most of his current star-turn

Real estate developer, reality TV star, President. Donald Trump is making the most of his third act. “Trump’s billionaire friend, Larry Ellison, bought CBS. Now he’s after CNN. Next up: TikTok. All with Trump’s backing,” Senator Bernie Sanders wrote. “This is how media works in authoritarian societies — a very dangerous trend.”

Status is reporting that Bari Weiss, the new CBS News Editor-in-Chief is looking at Fox News host Brett Baier, to anchor the legacy CBS Evening News broadcast. No comment from the spinning graves of Edward R. Murrow, Fred W. Friendly, or Walter Cronkite.

Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America, a left-leaning watchdog, wrote, “The Orbanization of the U.S. media is happening in plain sight, with the president using regulatory power to direct the sales of news outlets to his wealthy allies.” He’s referring to Viktor Orban, the president of Hungary, because Orban quietly and successfully ran even-handed reporting, not to mention opposing outlets, out of business using the combination of government oversight and cronies who were allowed to buy and change outlets that either opposed the president, or were neutral.

Bernie is right, the Trump Administration has clearly taken a page from Orban’s playbook by greasing the skids for friends and supporters, including Larry and David Ellison (the second wealthiest family in the world, thanks to their huge tech firm, Oracle). The administration favored the Ellisons’ purchase of Paramount/CBS by the family’s production company, Skydance (Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick, and other films with an overactive colon), over other suitors. Now they favor the Ellisons over other bidders for CNN parent, Warner Bros/Discovery.

The administration also favors them as investors in an American-controlled TikTok. All told, this would give the President’s proxies control over an unprecedented share-of-voice nationally. More than anyone ever before. Having CBS News, TikTok, and CNN all singing from the approved hymnal is not good for democracy or other living things.

We don’t have to guess about this. As usual, they’re saying the quiet part out loud. A senior administration figure demonstrated a keen eye for the obvious when he told WCNY’s “On the Money,” “Who owns WBD is very important to the administration.”

There is a lot of media—social and broadcast—that says Trump is failing. If you’re on their mailing lists, everyday you’re getting a dozen or more breathless missives suggesting that by donating just a little bit, you’ll put the final nail in the Trump coffin. File it all under Wishful Thinking. It’s important for people to have hope, but false hope is dangerously complacent.

The Congress has rendered itself moot. Speaker Mike Johnson has so completely surrendered the institutional role of the House of Representatives that they aren’t even pretending anymore. They’ve been out of session since September, and have no plans to reconvene before the end of the shutdown. (Yes, they’re getting paid.) On The View the other day, Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, said she is embarrased that they’re not in session (she’s not talking the paycheck).

It’s a dereliction of duty. The Speaker lied the other day when he said the House can’t reconvene while the government is shutdown. He has lied further by saying he can’t swear in the new representative from Arizona while the House is out of session. They are lies of convenience. The only Republican that matters, Donald Trump, does not want the Congress back in session for a few reasons, chief among them, the newly elected but unsworn rep from Arizona will be the deciding vote to force the release of the Epstein files.

Speaker Johnson has abdicated the Constitutional role of Congress. No longer does the House of Representatives control the government’s purse strings. Money Mike has handed that obligation off to the White House. He’s happy to be the President’s butler, maître d, and concierge, though these are not the Constitutionally-defined roles of the Speaker of the House. No other Speaker has handed the House over lock, stock, and barrel.

And arguing that the courts are checking the Trump administration is more wishful thinking. This lopsided Supreme Court granted Biden emergency docket requests just 30% of the time. They’ve granted Trump emergency requests 75% of the time. People want to assume that his low approval ratings mean he’s failing, but his numbers never rose to 50% in his first term, and this term seems to be a plateau. He may be the only president in history to never reach a 50% approval rating, but approval doesn’t matter to despots.

Recently, former strategist Steve Bannon floated the third term trial balloon. Then Trump, in an impromptu presser on Air Force One between Malaysia and Japan mused that he’d serve a third term since he’s so beloved. That actually got his SCOTUS appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, to shoot down that trial balloon, saying the 25th Amendment is cut-and-dry.

There are no third terms, but unfortunately for the country, there are third acts.

©2025 Jon Sinton