Share This Podcast

• Check out Matt’s work – www.mediamatters.org/author/matt-gertz
• Call Congress – 202-224-3121
• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy
• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/

TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, March 19th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day. The show that just learned legendary 80s new wave band, the B-52s, is upset with Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn made an AI parody of the song Love Shack to attack his primary competitor in the Senate runoff, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for having a whole bunch of affairs. Selected lyrics from the parody include, quote, “He’s heading down the corrupt highway looking for his lying getaway.” Politics! [music break] On today’s show, the gloves come off during Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin’s confirmation hearing, or maybe they were never on. And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggests that somehow intelligence is not part of her job. You probably had already figured that out. But let’s start with the Federal Communications Commission and the war with Iran, two topics that really shouldn’t go together. And yet here we are. The Iran war is not very popular with Americans, and the Trump administration seems to think it knows why. The media is being too mean about President Donald Trump’s war of choice. Trump himself spent his weekend railing on Truth Social against the Wall Street Journal and New York Times for their reporting on the war. He called them, quote, “highly unpatriotic news organizations who should face charges of treason.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to the New York times Monday, quote, “the media has been undeniably biased and negative in its coverage of President Trump and Operation Epic Fury.” Anybody with eyes and ears can see this. Of course, the administration that purports to loathe the media is chock full of former members of the media, like ex-Fox News host and Secretary of War/little boy Pete Hegseth. Here he is making some suggestions to journalists during a press conference on Friday. 

[clip of Pete Hegseth] People look up at the TV and they see banners. They see headlines. I used to be in that business. And I know that everything is written intentionally. For example, a banner or a headline, mideast war intensifies, splashing on the screen the last couple of days alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets that Iran has hit because that’s what they do. What should the banner read instead? How about Iran increasingly desperate? Because they are. 

Jane Coaston: How helpful. The message is clear. Say things the way we want you to say them, or else. And FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, never one to let subtext remain subtext, made that point on Twitter over the weekend. On Saturday, Carr reposted a Trump Truth Social screed against the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Carr added, quote, “The law is clear, broadcasters must operate in the public interest and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” Of course, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are not broadcasters, but I don’t think Carr cares. He wants all of the media to toe the line and be more patriotic. Here he is on Wednesday on the New York Post podcast, Pod Force One with Miranda Devine. 

[clip of Brendan Carr] We recently launched sort of in honor of the country’s 250th, a Pledge America campaign. We’re inviting broadcasters to, you know, once again, highlight the great wins of the country and to run patriotic programming, maybe starting off with Pledge of Allegiance, which we used to do, but just lots of ways that you can run pro-America content. We think that’d be a great thing for broadcasers to do particularly this year. 

Jane Coaston: And what’s more patriotic than telling Americans that the war in Iran is awesome? Here’s Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt echoing the party mandate on Monday. 

[clip of Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt] But the president has said enough with this coverage. 

[clip of unknown person] Yes. 

[clip of Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt] From other networks that are not telling you the truth, that are so negative about what’s going on. This is a pro-America fight, and every network needs to get on board with that. 

Jane Coaston: It would be funny if it weren’t so disturbing. Carr has real power in his role as FCC chairman, power he wants to use on behalf of President Trump and his war of choice. So to talk more about Carr’s FCC, I spoke with Matt Gertz. He’s a senior fellow at the progressive media watchdog, Media Matters. Matt, welcome to What a Day. 

Matt Gertz: Thanks so much for having me. 

Jane Coaston: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is threatening to revoke the license of broadcasters, quote, “that are running hoaxes and news distortions, also known as the fake news.” That’s from his tweet over the weekend. Now we all know the Trump administration has an inaccurate idea of what is and isn’t fake news, so what does this really mean to you? 

Matt Gertz: Well, I think there’s a lot of confusion about what exactly Carr could do and whether I think he will try to do it. The reality is that the FCC’s powers are fairly limited here. His ability to take away licenses is not something that he can do at a whim. And even if he were to do something, there is, you know, lots of legal precedent that suggests he would not be able to do it successfully. If the stations in question fought. That I think is the big concern though. We saw Trump and his administration roll out a lot of the same tactics in his first term. He attempted to meddle with a merger involving CNN. He issued a lot threats to Jeff Bezos over Amazon. Bezos also owned the Washington Post. But what we saw then was the moguls were willing to put up a fight. They were willing to take him to court. To defend the First Amendment. This time around, they’re not doing that. And because of that, I think there is a real concern that we’ll have news outlets knuckling under rather than fighting back. 

Jane Coaston: Now if Carr ever made good on this threat, how would it work? Like how would you take away a license? I mean, obviously the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal don’t have licenses and neither do I. How would this even work? 

Matt Gertz: Right, so the broadcast networks work kind of like uh franchisees, right? You have all of these individual local stations across the country. They put out programming from ABC or CBS or Fox or NBC. They’re all licensed by the FCC. It’s not the overall broadcast network that is sort of implicated here. It’s those individual stations. Those stations are also often owned by larger affiliate networks. Um, you know, companies that bundle together 10, 20, 50, a hundred, almost 200 stations now. 

Jane Coaston: Like Sinclair. 

Matt Gertz: Like Sinclair, right. 

Jane Coaston: Some listeners/viewers might remember from the Jimmy Kimmel incident in which a bunch of Sinclair owned stations pulled his show in protest after his remarks regarding conservative activist Charlie Kirk. So, you know, if you are watching NBC News in Cincinnati or CBS in Seattle, a lot of these networks are owned by these corporations. And that’s the concern I have, which is, you know, yes, Carr could take away their licenses, but these corporations might just kowtow anyway. 

Matt Gertz: Exactly. And in fact, they can also just use Carr’s complaints as an excuse to engage in that sort of right wing machinations, which is what we saw in the Jimmy Kimmel scenario. I mean, a lot of what Carr is doing is jaw boning. He is suggesting the possibility of future regulatory actions taken against these news outlets if they don’t you know get themselves in line. And I think what we’ve seen is that in many cases, the news business often makes up a tiny fraction of the overall business interests of these corporations. And so you end up in a situation where the journalists might want to do a good job, do good reporting, but it is those sort of corporate moguls who are the ones actually being put to the test, who actually have the decision-making power here. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s say, Brendan Carr did it. He revoked the broadcast license for one of these entities. Where do they go from there? 

Matt Gertz: I mean, then they’d have to sue in federal court. Uh. Most of the First Amendment advocates who’ve talked about this have said that there’s just no way that a court would agree with Brendan Carr in a case like this, that the court would act on the station’s behalf and sort of get rid of that ruling. But it’s expensive, right, to fight for the First amendment. You have to you know hire lawyers to defend yourself against the federal government. And, you know, what we saw from Disney and from CBS when they were sued by Donald Trump over reporting they had done was that their owners basically forced them to fold because it would be better for their overall corporation to just get it over with. 

Jane Coaston: The BBC just asked a judge to dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit over an edit made to one of Trump’s speeches in the documentary, Trump, a Second Chance. They’re saying allowing the lawsuit would cause a quote, “chilling effect.” So I want to ask about your take on that. But I also want to ask, it seems as if if you give in to Trump, you just have to keep doing it. But if you don’t, nothing seems to happen. Trump is technically suing both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and they haven’t stopped doing any reporting on Trump. What does that tell you? 

Matt Gertz: I think these are sort of related questions. I think what the administration is trying to do is very much to chill the speech of these news outlets to try to convince them not to do more critical reporting and commentary about their goings on. You know, Trump loves to complain about anything that is less propagandistic than what he sees on Fox News every day. But the BBC, like the New York Times, like The Wall Street Journal is an entity that is entirely or if not entirely then largely a news organization. I mean that’s sort of the whole ball of wax for them. If they don’t produce independent credible news reporting they lose their entire business model. Whereas CBS News is part of a much larger conglomerate for which the news division is a tiny fraction of it. So I think the logic for some of these moguls is it’s basically a rounding error, whatever happens to CBS News for the larger industry. 

Jane Coaston: It’s interesting to me, and I’m curious for your thoughts on how Hegseth and others within the Trump administration seem to be basically making the argument of like, I can’t wait until you’re taken over by people we like. It’s not just about we are upset at how you’re reporting on these stories. It is a direct, we want you to be owned by different people and we have the power to make that happen. How does that impact these kind of disputes going forward when it seems so clear that Trump wants to hear something different from CNN or CBS or any of these outlets, and he and the people around him are willing to say so out loud. 

Matt Gertz: Yeah, I mean, I think it means that it will just be ongoing pressure on all of these entities throughout the Trump administration. I mean we’re really seeing, I think a use of strategies similar to those that, uh, Victor Orban, the autocratic leader of Hungary used over the last decade, decade and a half to mold its media, uh sort of attempting to shift independent outlets into the hands of his cronies. I think David Ellison is playing that role. He’s the son of Larry Ellison, a major Trump supporter, and he now, between he and his father, if this uh merger involving CNN’s parent company goes through, they’ll control CNN and CBS News and the Paramount and Warner Brothers movie studios and a host of other cable news networks and TikTok, or a sizable chunk of it as well. That’s a lot of power and influence to have uh in the hands of one or two people. But I think it’s also a sign that they think that the way to get in good with the president and with this administration is to take on these media outlets uh and try to break them, to try to make them produce coverage that the president would prefer. 

Jane Coaston: I think my last very quick question is Trump’s popularity is declining rapidly, and I think everyone can see it. Do you think that at all will change the calculation media companies make with regard to the president? 

Matt Gertz: I think what’s interesting about the current moment is we’re two weeks into this war. It’s not going well. And the president is already settled on trying to make the media the kind of scapegoat for how the war effort is going, or at least how it’s being perceived. He seems to be using a lot of the strategies that I think we remember from the early days of the Iraq war, where the president was much more popular, the war was much more popular. And news outlets were under a lot of pressure to produce a favorable coverage of the conflict. But because Trump is so unpopular, because the war is already unpopular. It lands, I think, pretty flat with the broader American public. The public likes free speech, the public likes the First Amendment. And so I think that this is not a popular move by the president, but one that he’ll certainly try to continue to do. I think from the perspective of the moguls, whether the president is popular or not, he’s going to remain in office for the remainder of his term, absent some major change. And because of that, they’re going to have to deal with his regulatory apparatus for the remainder of that period. They can try to wait him out, of course. They can try to take that into their business calculations. They can also consider the possibility that if they are too willing to toe the Trump line. That at some point in the future, a different administration could attempt to use the same powers in the opposite direction. So they are gonna have to make those calculations going forward, especially as, you know, it doesn’t seem like Trump is going to have the kind of popularity that he had at the very beginning of his tenure all the way through. 

Jane Coaston: Matt, thank you so much for joining me. 

Matt Gertz: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Matt Gertz, senior fellow at the progressive media watchdog Media Matters. This is a show that won’t be counted by the FCC or pretty much anyone else. So if you like what we’re doing, smash those buttons, like, subscribe, comment, and send the show to a friend. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Jane Coaston: The girls, I mean, grown men in Congress are fighting. To break down the beef, I wanted to chat with Matt Berg, Crooked’s Washington correspondent, who has been reporting on the biggest stories in politics. Hey, Matt. 

Matt Berg: Hey, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s listen to this clip from the confirmation hearing for a new secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. It appears Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul has some thoughts he’d like to share. 

[clip of Senator Rand Paul] Look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified. So today you’ll have your chance. Today I’ll give you that chance to clear the record. Tell it to my face. If that’s what you believe, tell it to me today. Tell the world why you believe I deserve to be assaulted from behind, have six ribs broken and a damaged lung. Tell me to my face why you think I deserved it. 

Jane Coaston: Senator Paul confronted Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin during his confirmation hearing to lead DHS, questioning whether, quote, “a man with anger issues should be trusted to run the department filled with ICE agents who all appear to have anger issues.” Their beef, as you can see, stems from Mullin’s past comments describing Paul as a freaking snake and saying that he could understand why Paul’s neighbor violently attacked him in 2017. Mullin refused to apologize for his comment. Quote, “I did not say I supported it, I said I understood it.” There is a difference. He said, I love this beef, um I love that they hate each other, and I love the fact that Mullin was saying like, no no no, I didn’t say I supported it, I said I understood it, which um is uh not that distinct a difference. 

Matt Berg: Right. It appears that we’re living in the Veep universe right now based on this hearing. Mullin throughout the entire thing basically tried to prove that he doesn’t have anger issues. He also told lawmakers that he regrets describing Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse killed by agents in Minneapolis, is quote, “deranged.” Mullin explained quote, “those words probably should have been retracted. I shouldn’t have said that,” he said. “Sometimes I’m going to make a mistake and I own it. That one I went out there too fast. I was responding immediately without the facts. That’s my fault. That won’t happen as secretary.” And you know, despite all this drama, there is almost no chance that he will not be confirmed. We are in Trump 2.0 and the [?] cabinet secretaries have been confirmed so far. Rand Paul, if he really wanted to further this beef, could theoretically slow down the process, is the chairman of Senate Homeland Committee, but he probably doesn’t think it’s worth it at this point. 

Jane Coaston: That may have been the most entertaining news, but a more important hearing was going on at the same time. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other top Trump officials testified at the Worldwide Threats hearing. Somehow, Kash admitting that the FBI is purchasing data to track people isn’t the biggest news, though we’re gonna have to really get into that at another time. The big story was that Trump’s intelligence team still can’t explain why he went to war with Iran. Here’s Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff grilling Gabbard. 

[clip of Senator Jon Ossoff] Was it the intelligence community’s assessment that nevertheless, despite this obliteration, there was a quote, “imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?” Yes or no? 

[clip of Tulsi Gabbard] It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.

[clip of Senator Jon Ossoff] Okay. 

[clip of Tulsi Gabbard] That is up to the president. 

[clip of Senator Jon Ossoff] Here’s here’s the problem.

[clip of Tulsi Gabbard] Based on a volume of information and evidence– 

[clip of Senator Jon Ossoff] No it is, it is precisely– 

[clip of Tulsi Gabbard] –that he receives. 

[clip of Senator Jon Ossoff] It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States. This is the worldwide threats hearing where, as you noted in your opening testimony, quote, “You represent the IC’s assessment of threats.” You are here to represent the IC’s assessment of threats, that’s a quote from your own opening statement. 

Jane Coaston: It is deeply entertaining that Tulsi Gabbard is stuck in this position. Tulsi Gabbard, a person who sold on the internet, no war with Iran t-shirts. But Matt, you watched most of the hearing. I mean, did any Trump officials give a coherent answer? 

Matt Berg: Well, first off, Ossoff’s argument that this is the worldwide threats hearing was a pretty good one. Um. I wouldn’t go that far. 

Jane Coaston: Yes it was! 

Matt Berg: Exactly I mean. 

Jane Coaston: It’s a worldwide threats and she’s supposed to be like she yo, that’s not our job to tell you what an imminent threat is I’m like, yes it is. That’s the job, if this were on LinkedIn, it would be like bullet point two. 

Matt Berg: I think Gabbard understood that at a certain point. It took a while to get her there, but she just like didn’t offer any clear response of the intelligence that they gave Trump. Bottom line, we learned nothing of Trump’s motivations to strike Iran during that hearing. Both Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe insisted that Trump had all the intel he needed to make the decision, but they were extremely vague on what they actually told him. And one thing, Jane, is that there was a lot of awkward silence and when there’s awkward silence during a hearing of this importance, it’s usually not a good sign. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Matt Berg: So Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, asked officials whether Trump had been warned about Iran’s likely retaliation, which was pretty obvious to everyone in the intel community for decades. I counted, and it took Ratcliffe four seconds to muster a response. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, that’s a really long time in answering a question about something that you should probably have more of an answer to, but um, in more news that I hate and dislike, the New York Times released a multi-year investigation into labor activist Cesar Chavez on Wednesday, revealing that the organizer, who passed away in 1993, had repeatedly sexually abused women and girls, including the children of United Farm Workers organizers and fellow activist Dolores Huerta. The Times spoke to multiple survivors and more than 60 aides, organizers, and relatives. They reviewed articles, writings, audio recordings, you know contemporaneous writing, including from some of the survivors to Chavez written when they were very young teens um in order to verify their stories. It was deeply disturbing reading that. 

Matt Berg: Right. 

Jane Coaston: Really, really disturbing. 

Matt Berg: Yeah, and I believe it took the Times something like five years to do this reporting. It was a long project and there’s going to be a lot of accountability to come. But one thing that we could see in the near term is changes to the holiday. Several states, including California, recognize Cesar Chavez day on March 31st. Arizona governor Katie Hobbs became the first governor this week to stop recognizing the holiday after the allegations surfaced. In a press conference on Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said he’s processing the news, but he wouldn’t yet commit to making any changes to the holiday per se. Another option could be changing the name of the holiday, but it lands on Chavez’s birthday so there would still be some association there. 

Jane Coaston: Gross! It’s gross, and it’s depressing, and I hate it. But I don’t hate hanging out with you, Matt. Thank you so much. 

Matt Berg: Thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: And that’s the news. [music break] 

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate even more Markwayne Mullin lore, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how during his hearing before the Senate Homeland Committee Wednesday, Mullin mentioned going on a classified trip in 2016 when he was in the House that he wouldn’t detail, and that the federal government had no evidence of ever happening, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and now I have even more questions. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, and Ethan Oberman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]