- Today’s news about Stephen Colbert;
- Conservatives have finally managed to cut funding to PBS and NPR;
- David Brooks on Trump winning the race to the bottom;
- Sure enough, EPA is firing hundreds of scientific experts;
- Fareed Zakaria on how Obama deported more people than Trump, and why;
- And the weird claim about Trump’s 90% approval rating.
The big news today (aside from yesterday’s big news about Epstein) is about CBS announcing it will not renew the contract of Stephen Colbert when it expires next May.
The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 17 Jul 2025: Is Colbert’s Ouster Really Just a ‘Financial Decision’?, subtitled “CBS no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.”
Beginning with some background.
Building an empire takes decades. Destroying it can take only a few years, and sometimes the vandals are in the palace, not outside the gates.
For much of the 20th century, American broadcast television revolved around three networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. William S. Paley, CBS’s longtime CEO, made sure that his company—the Columbia Broadcasting System—was a leader among them. The network was home to Edward R. Murrow, who brought World War II in Europe home to Americans on CBS Radio; after the war, Murrow’s reporting played a pivotal role in bringing down Senator Joseph McCarthy. Walter Cronkite dominated American evenings from his perch at the Evening News. And from the days of Mike Wallace to the more recent era of Lesley Stahl and Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes set the standard for long-form television reporting.
Now today.
Yet CBS’s current ownership seems determined to demolish this legacy. This evening, the network announced plans to end The Late Show With Stephen Colbert when the host’s contract ends next May. Late-night personalities come and go, but usually that happens when their ratings sag. Colbert, however, has consistently led competitors in his time slot. CBS said this was “purely a financial decision,” made as traditional linear television fades.
Perhaps this is true, but the network that once made Cronkite the most trusted man in America no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. CBS’s owners have made a series of decisions capitulating to President Donald Trump, and the surprise choice to allow Colbert—a consistent, prominent Trump critic—to walk seems like part of that pattern.
Followed by recent history since 2016, including the recent 60 Minutes debacle. The gist of the current issue, apparently, is that Colbert criticized a recent settlement between CBS and Trump, because CBS’ owner, Paramount, needs the approval of the Trump administration for a merger with Skydance.
Much coverage of this today. Here’s one more, from Google News: Variety: CBS Canceling Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Is an End of an Era for Television — and a Chilling Sign of What’s to Come
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Conservatives don’t believe in a common good. Only ideological bubbles.
NY Times, Media Memo by Jim Rutenberg, 18 Jul 2025: Conservatives Get the PBS and NPR Cuts They’ve Wanted for Decades
They tried under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Newt Gingrich gave it a go when he controlled the House, and Bob Dole did, too, when he held power in the Senate.
But for five decades, Republicans failed time and again to choke off federal funding for public broadcasting. Some were afraid of being accused of avicide (for “killing Big Bird” of “Sesame Street”), while others appreciated their local public stations (and the airtime they personally received) — always stopping the party short of turning their threats against PBS and NPR into law.
That they have finally been able to do it now, voting on Friday to claw back $1.1 billion in public broadcasting funds, on one level speaks to the power of President Trump. His threat to support primary challenges against any Republicans who might try to block the cuts all but guaranteed they would go through this time.
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Along similar themes…
NY Times, opinion by David Brooks, 17 Jul 2025: Trump Is Winning the Race to the Bottom
Recalling America’s leap to action following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957, with the creation of NASA, and so on. Now we’re in a second Cold War, with China.
So how is America responding to the greatest challenge of Cold War II? With huge increases in research? By infusing money into schools and universities that train young minds and produce new ideas? We’re doing the exact opposite. Today’s leaders don’t seem to understand what the Chinese clearly understand — that the future will be dominated by the country that makes the most of its talent. …
Populists are anti-intellectual. President Trump isn’t pumping research money into the universities; he’s draining it out. The administration is not tripling the National Science Foundation’s budget; it’s trying to gut it. The administration is trying to cut all federal basic research funding by a third, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A survey by the journal Nature of 1,600 scientists in the United States found that three-quarters of them have considered leaving the country.
The response to the Sputnik threat was to go outward and compete. Trump’s response to the Chinese threat generally is to build walls, to erect trade barriers and to turn inward. A normal country would be strengthening friendships with all nations not named China, but the United States is burning bridges in all directions. A normal country would be trying to restore America’s shipbuilding industry by making it the best in the world. We’re trying to save it through protectionism. The thinking seems to be: We can protect our mediocre industries by walling ourselves off from the world. That’s a recipe for national decline.
And he ends with this:
But the primary contest is psychological — almost spiritual. Do Americans have faith in the power of the human mind? Are they willing to invest to enlarge the national talent pool? Right now, no. Americans, on the left and the right, have become highly attentive to threat, risk-averse and self-doubting about the national project. What do you do with a country with astounding advantages but that no longer believes in itself?
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Just this afternoon:
JMG, quoting NYT, 18 Jul 2025: EPA To Shutter Scientific Research Division And Fire Hundreds Of Chemists, Biologists, And Toxicologists
The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it would eliminate its scientific research arm and begin firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, after denying for months that it intended to do so.
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I always pay attention to Fareed Zakaria. This is very interesting…
Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria, 18 Jul 2025: This entry was posted in Politics. Bookmark the permalink.
