Inside the Government’s Crackdown on TV

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From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams.

And this is the Daily.

When Stephen Colbert announced that the government's

increasingly aggressive stance toward late night,

meant that he could not air a planned interview

with the Democratic Senate candidate.

It sent chills throughout the media.

And then this past weekend, the chair of the Federal

Communications Commission threatened to punish news outlets

over coverage of the war in Iran.

Today, my colleague Jim Rootenberg explains how the White House is trying

to shape media coverage of its agenda.

And just how far it's willing to go,

in its crackdown on network television.

It's Wednesday, March 18th.

Jim Rootenberg, welcome back to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

Jim, we've turned to you a few times on the show now

when we have questions about the media and free speech

and government intervention.

And just this last weekend, in fact,

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the SEC,

threatened media companies by basically implying in a tweet

that he would revoke station licenses that ran with coverage

of the Iran War that he called, quote,

hoaxes and distortions.

And between that and the dust ups he's had with late night,

most recently with Stephen Colbert,

we wanted to have you on, yet again, here today,

to explain to us what we are seeing play out

on our television screens.

What happened over the weekend with Chairman Carr's tweet

was part of a pattern he's been making threats like this

since he started as a chairman at the start of Trump's term

to warn stations away from certain content the administration doesn't like.

And this one was extra alarming to people

because it was a governmental threat against station licenses

at a time of war when information is at a premium

where the public really needs to understand what's going on.

But one thing I want to say here is this failed threat he was making.

It's really legally dubious.

The FCC can't go willy-nilly grabbing licenses

because it disagrees with the content.

In fact, it's totally prohibited under the law.

It does have control over stations' licensees.

But what he's talking about to take away licenses

from television stations, it's a very own or a illegal process.

So we'll see how that plays out.

But we do have other test cases that are part of the same campaign

where the FCC is really saberaddling

in a way that we haven't seen in decades.

And we have seen how far it can go

and how serious the effects can be.

And most notably where we've seen the rubber really meet the road

has been of all places with late-night television

more specifically the Stephen Cobert show of CBS.

And remind us what happened with Cullbear?

Well, it really starts in January, the FCC

notifies broadcasters that we are going to apply a role

called the equal time rule to late-night television.

And it says that when candidates for office

are on non-news programming,

there's to be an equal amount of time

to all candidates running for a certain office.

They need equal time on that station.

You're all unnoticed.

We're going to apply it.

So a few weeks later,

when Stephen Cullbear books Telluriko on his show,

Telluriko is now in a primary campaign against Jasmine Crockett,

CBS's lawyers notifies Stephen Cullbear and his producers,

hey, you could have a problem here with the FCC

because you have an equal time issue potentially.

And Stephen Cullbear and the network disagree to the extent to which

CBS told him not to air an interview with Telluriko

or whether they were just warning him.

But you know, who is not one of my guests tonight?

That's Texas State Representative James Telluriko.

Stephen Cullbear goes on his show and says that he's been told

he can't have Telluriko on.

Now, he can't have him on YouTube,

which doesn't fall under the FCC.

And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this,

let's talk about this.

And he really does call attention to this campaign from this old agency

that people sitting at home hadn't heard of or hadn't heard about in years.

You might have heard of this thing called the Equal Time Rule,

okay? It's an old FCC rule that applies only to radio and broadcast television.

He makes a big stink out of this.

Let's just call this what it is.

Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says

anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV.

And just to be clear, in this specific example with Cullbear,

the FCC didn't tell CBS it couldn't have Telluriko on the show.

What we saw was more of a preemptive move by CBS

to avoid incurring the wrath of the FCC.

That's exactly right.

This is not an example of Brendan Carr,

the FCC saying, hey, Stephen Cullbear can't have that person on.

But what is absolutely true here is that there's no discussion inside of CBS

if the FCC does not issue this new guidance on late night television in January,

which is putting the whole late night world,

the whole network world on notice that we're really going to be watching you here.

And in so many years of covering this Rachel,

it was the first time that I had seen a moment where a content decision was made

at a major network involving politics in direct reaction to a newly declared policy

on the federal government level.

Something I've been wondering about, though, Jim, is just why late night?

Because we've been hearing for years that late nights numbers are declining.

So I don't really understand why the administration would choose to focus on this segment of television

in particular.

Well, I'll tell you, and I've talked to some of the people involved on the conservative side

in this effort.

And what they will say is that broadcast television is free, and every American can get it

without meeting a cable subscription, without meeting an internet subscription.

So it has a reach that nothing else has to this day.

And where ratings might not be what they once were, it also lives on online.

Stephen Cullbear's bits, Jimmy Kimmel's bits, they bounce around online in a way other

comedy bits don't. And that is in part because of this broadcast platform they have,

that it's still worth something, it's still valuable.

But I think that there's a big reason that the administration's going after late night in this moment.

And it's not just about reach.

It's about sort of the evolution of late night television over the years.

Throughout the course of TV history, late night has carved out this really unique role in the

landscape. One that has over the years let it coast along beyond the reach of the

regulators quite a bit. And so the SEC said, look, maybe this hasn't been applied in a really

long time, but we are going to hold you to this equal time standard and you better come correct.

How did late night end up getting such a privileged position and end up with that carve out

that you mentioned? Well, it's kind of a long story. And it starts really with the rule we are

talking about, the equal time rule. Let me bring you, if you will, back to the 1920s. Please.

My favorite time. You're broadcasting over WAM, operating on a frequency of 1120kph.

People forget this, but when radio was new, in the 1920s, the government and the radio industry

grappling with this new thing, radio. It's doing something that's never been done in human history.

It is reaching millions of people at once electronically with sound, very evocative,

but the industry was having a very hard time at the beginning of the radio days because

anyone could get a transmitter and throw up a signal on any frequency. And so radio was a complete

mess, competing signals, static, the industry needed government to come and sort it out.

So government basically said, we're taking control of this. We're going to issue licenses for

the exclusive use of certain station frequencies. But in return, because of this power,

you are going to have, we are going to expect you to do certain things to make sure to use

responsibly. This could really affect politics, because whoever owns the station will get to

dictate everything what people think. Right. So what they came up with were rules that said you

couldn't use a radio station to give one-sided versions of the most controversial issues in

town. You can't give one candidate the advantage. And so the equal time rule comes about to say,

if you give one candidate advertising time at a certain rate for a certain amount of time,

then you have to give the other. And if you have one on, you have to have the other on. This is now

we're talking about candidates. They have to be candidates. And just to explain that a little bit,

the protocol here is that the network has to figure out some way to give the other person some

program, some advertisement that gets like what the same reach or. Right. It's got to have the same,

you can't like give them time at four in the morning. Right. Right. It's got to have similar ratings.

It's got to be free and it's got to be the same amount of time. So over the years, this transfers

over to television, but society is continually evolving. Politics is continually evolving.

Media is continually evolving. And by the 1950s, the way this gets applied, all these rules,

it starts to change. For instance, around debates. And sometimes you have 20 people running for

the same office and 17 of whom don't have a shot in heck, I'll say. Good. This is a clean family

shows. No FCC guidance for this. So they need it to be the good one. But in all seriousness,

what do you do when you have 17 candidates all clamoring for equal time? The stations were able to

argue quite convincingly, we need an exemption here. We can't have debates where we have to give 17

candidates equal time every time. It's just completely unworkable. We have to be left to our own

devices when it comes to something like a debate. That's a news event. News judgment has to reign

supreme there where the news people decide who is worthy of the debate. So news gets exempted.

Documentaries. They're basically news too. They need to be exempted. So you have all these

exemptions getting added. And they're getting added because the government realized that we should not

be referring the minutes of air time on a news broadcast because a news broadcast should be

dictated based on what is newsworthy. Yeah, there's this presumption that news people operate in

good faith. They do their best. The government has to stay out of their way. And they apply a term

to this idea, bonafide news. That's legit news that news people are going to be trusted to present

to the best of their ability. That will be nonpartisan journalistically valid and serving the public

interest. So that becomes the new understanding of the equal time rule. But the rules still

very much applies to anything that might be considered entertainment. So if you have a candidate

come on a game show or something that would trigger the equal time rule. If you have a candidate

on a news show, the equal time does not apply very simple, right? In the 1950s, it makes a lot of

sense. These two worlds are pretty much completely separate. Got it. But over the years, the worlds

of entertainment and news, they start to come together a lot more. And applying this equal time

rule starts to get a lot more complicated. How so? So you have on the one hand more and more

entertainers entering the world of politics. Some day when the teams have against it, exhibit a

Ronald Reagan. Most people knew him as an actor before he was running. He's now a politician and

he runs for governor, California, then president. Ask him to go in there with all that kind of

win, just one for the kipper. That's causing problems for stations that run his old movies,

and they're all over TV. So candidates who are running against him can go to the stations and say,

hey, I want two hours of free air time to make up for that. And those television stations would

stand to lose a lot of money if they have to start giving away two hours of time. And then at the

same time, it's coming back the other way. You have politicians trying their hand or entertainment.

They're increasingly showing up on late night talk shows.

Bill Clinton, he sort of changes the game. He goes on Arsenio Hall's show late night program,

and he doesn't just sit and talk about the issues or make himself relatable. He goes and he plays

the saxophone. Mr. Hip. Did you ever think about playing professionally? Yeah, and I liked it tonight.

I like being on the other side of the posse. Yeah. Speaking of what your drummer said, he said,

if this music thing doesn't work out, you can always run for president.

Is that news, entertainment? It's all mixing together now. And this pitch is the whole late night world

into this regulatory legal never-reaching that no one quite knows what to do with.

Finally, though, in the mid-2000s, the FCC has to weigh in. And what happened then?

Well, it has to do with the tonight show when it was hosted by Jay Leno.

In 2003, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for governor in California, he found a very friendly

platform with Jay Leno and the tonight show on NBC. Unashamedly bringing showbiz to politics.

Arnold Schwarzenegger chose the Jay Leno tonight show to a night. He's running for office.

When Schwarzenegger announced that he was running for governor of California, he did it on Leno.

And this is why I'm going to run for governor.

Leno, I have to note, also had spoken at a Schwarzenegger victory party.

Leno and Schwarzenegger were like, it was like a buddy movie.

And Schwarzenegger was on Leno again and again and again.

Do I talk like that? I'm going to reinstate the car tax for you.

Now, fast forward to when Arnold's running again. He's now governor for re-election in 2006.

And the Democrat, Phil Andalitis, starts saying, hey, this isn't fair.

Leno is giving Schwarzenegger this huge platform their friends.

So Andalitis says, hey, I want equal time. And the FCC is going to have to

adjudicate here because NBC is not inclined to give it. And the FCC takes a look and says,

you know what, this is a bona fide news interview. We do not think it's being used for partisan

purposes. So we are going to say that the tonight show is exempt here. That was very specific

to that situation. But all of late night took that to mean if the FCC said that's okay,

then that was sort of taken as all right. Well, that's an extreme case and that's fine. So off we go.

So basically, because the FCC decided that this case still counted as bona fide news,

the rest of late night interpreted that to mean we must have really broad latitude. We can do

whatever we want. We can have whoever we want on for however long and we are not subject to these

rules pretty much. I mean, and the FCC did not enforce it. So after this Leno rolling and

after late night takes, this is a sort of blanket exemption, we have another shift in late night

that we should really note here. And that's in the bush years, the late night hosts start

becoming even more political. Let's start tonight with our continuing cover jump.

Mass Opotemia. As you know, we went to Iraq. They're led a little bit by John Stewart. How many

Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000 more or less. Well, it's nice to see the

president estimating casualties with the same inflection you use to guess how many jelly beans are

in a jar. He's not under the FCC thumb the same way. He's on Comedy Central with his daily show.

Right. He's on cable, not broadcast. Yes, but also Stewart is having amazing success. So he's

influencing the broadcast guys. Good news. The White House has now released a 35-page plan

entitled our national strategy for victory in Iraq. President Bush refuses to set a time

table for reading it, but he thinks it and all of late night starts getting much more political.

That's not even a joke. It's just... And much more sort of liberal leaning.

The occasion, ladies and gentlemen, today was the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump winning the presidency.

Now, the traditional one-year anniversary gift is paper. So if you want to get Trump something,

you can't go wrong with a federal indictment. That's what I mean.

They're often saving their sharpest barbs for Trump especially, but Republican politicians across

the board. Please welcome back to the late show Vice President Joseph R. Biden.

And over the years, more and more of their guests are Democrats.

Like, can you run down to the kitchen in your underpants in the middle of the night if you're hungry?

I mean, I could. I don't. You don't.

And that continues to harden through the Trump years.

So that late night, you know, when Leno is there with Schwarzenegger, this is shocking.

Years later now, late night has become much more a forum for politics and one that does favor

one side of the spectrum. But the FCC, whether it's under democratic control,

Republican control, even Trump's control in the first term, the FCC is letting it mostly happen.

They're not really waiting into late night until last year.

We'll be right back.

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My name is Jasmine Uyua and I'm a national politics reporter for The New York Times.

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Well, it comes to a head because of this little known lawyer from Wisconsin named Daniel Sir.

And I got to spend a lot of time talking with him including a visit in Milwaukee and it's kind

of a long journey he goes on to become really one of the chief antagonists of late night TV right now.

I start out as a free market conservative right and so Daniel Sir is basically a rising

stark conservative lawyer. He had worked for years on you know real classic conservative causes

and a couple of years ago with a colleague of his he founded a non-profit law firm called the

Center for American Rights. They are not doing anything and never in his career from what I could see

had he done anything relating to television broadcast roles the FCC.

But as he tells it things change for him in the fall of 2024 when he watches that first and only

debate between Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris. The fact checking seems so

egregiously one side. Trump is saying things like they're eating the cats and they're eating the

dogs in Springfield Ohio the moderators are cutting in the fact check him they're not fact checking

Kamala Harris. Trump is furious after the debate he says they ought to take ABC's license away

because one thing I want to remind people is in Trump's first term what you did hear him say a lot

of the time was pull their license pull their license and Sir he's hearing Trump and he's been

thinking about this well what what does that mean how do you pull a license so we do what lawyers

do we research it you know read the law we get into it and he learns about the history that you

and I just spoke about it looks at the law and all these laws are based on this idea and the law

the public interest convenience and necessity I just I can't believe given that their public

airways that you know it's essentially a unreported unregulated campaign contributions I'm

great party it's like how is that legal what he said was look I didn't even realize the extent of

these public interest rules and so to him it's shocking that these networks are allowed to behave

this way he's always thought that they're biased the media also holds its own kind of power

needs to be held accountable and he sees that you can make challenges to certain stations if you think

they're in violation he and he files a complaint against an ABC station in Philadelphia it happens

to be where the debate happened he could have filed it at any station but that's where he does it

and he goes on when Trump is screaming bloody murder about a CBS interview with Kamala Harris on

60 minutes that Trump is alleging was edited to make her look better Sir finds a way to file a

complaint against the FCC on that is finds a term called news distortion he brings a complaint on

that basis but the idea in both of these cases is that these networks are so partisan that they are

not serving the public interest and that what they are presenting is not bonafide news it's partisan

content meant to sway the audience so what Daniel Sir the lawyer is doing with these complaints is

he's basically going back in time and he's saying the FCC wanted to make programming not biased right

but the carveouts that they subsequently made for news where they said that you know what if you're

a news program we trust your journalistic judgment go forth he's basically saying that does not

apply in today's world these news programs they need more of a referee and so these complaints are

basically saying we need to take a much closer look at these networks to see if they're actually

running a foul of the regulations yeah exactly but the reason it really caught my eyes I've studied

these rules how they came about for years and years and my conservative sources when I talk to them

about media have always said these rules are an abomination they violate everything we believe in

as conservatives we don't want the government messing in content and so we shall not really take

rules like this seriously and Daniel Sir represents this new strain of conservative in the Trump

era that's saying no no no we went too far now you know let people draw their own conclusions

about the conservative movement that felt this so loudly and now is saying that it doesn't

but what he is saying is that we as conservatives believe in the market but sometimes the market

doesn't solve all problems and in this case it's gotten so biased and the market's not solving it

and so why have we allowed this to happen I'm going to file these complaints and before the Biden

administration leaves office the FCC chair Jessica Rosenwärsel asked her enforcement division at

the FCC to take a look at these circumplains and they found that they carried no weight there was

no legal merit to them so they rejected those and for good measure they also threw out a complaint

lodged by a liberal group against the Fox station in Philadelphia relating to stolen election

coverage on Fox News back from 2020 so they're all invalidated so how much of a deterrent is that

to Daniel Sir to get all of his complaints thrown out well it's not a deterrent at all because

Brendan Carr the incoming FCC chair was publicly kind of validating Sir's complaints and taking

them very seriously and remind us quickly who is Brendan Carr and what does he believe

some different stuff in the media space now as compared to Trump 45 so Brendan Carr is a long time

FCC commissioner had been a staff level lawyer before that so very rooted in communications law

but very much Trump's kind of guy come at least coming in to this second turn it doesn't seem to

have been a focus these public interest rules for you previously right and and in first like it seems

like a newer issue for you is that partly a Daniel Sir showing up after ABC and saying hey wait a

minute well thank you sir has been very helpful in pointing out not just you know the issue but

and he later tell me that Daniel Sir really lights the way for him I do think that Daniel Sir has

been doing tremendous work doing a lot of the research bringing you know grounding his positions

in historic FCC case law impressive I think it so speaks to what Trump wants to see in a second

term in terms of a media that's going to behave differently toward him and one of the first things

that Carr does when he takes a chairmanship over after the inauguration is he reinstates all of

those complaints not the Fox complaint okay so everything you're talking about is news news news

right so how does Daniel Sir take this from the news ecosystem and bring it into late night well

interestingly now Daniel Sir has the winded his back right he's got the ear of the FCC chair

he's cooking with gas on this issue and he starts to look around and he notices that there's an

even bigger opportunity than broadcast news and that's when he comes to late night I would say late

night is where the cultural power of celebrity is led to the democratic party power these late night

hosts able to so tilt their programming toward the Democrats watch the evening news yeah it may

have a slant that makes you think about the world a certain way but that's different from seeing

your favorite actors and your favorite influencers and your favorite comedians constantly showering

praise on those same politicians and he writes a letter to Carr citing some study showing that

late night is like they have more liberals on and in early September he actually files a complaint

against Jimmy Kimmel and that's against the LA station ABC station he says you basically same idea

Kimmel is tilting his show toward one side and you know this is unacceptable and Rachel literally

days later an assassin shoots and kills Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel so you remember does this

very controversial monologue right where he implies that the shooter could be a mega fan

with the maggot gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk is

anything other than one of them and what everything they can and this is a new low

people especially in Trump world go crazy over that easy they're trolling or just stupid I'm not

sure which maybe both oh I'm going with stupid on this one liberal comedian trying to pin

this murder on our Trump person he didn't imply it he said it of one of our great heroes the most

ass-known things I ever heard conspiracy land literally and you know it ends up that the person

isn't not anything at all like that it's negligence at best to not already know that if you're

Jimmy Kimmel but clearly he doesn't care and so Carr when you look at the conduct that has taken place

by Jimmy Kimmel in this maelstrom steps up to say on a podcast you know what there's a very

concerted effort to try to lie to the American people this could be relative of the public interest

these companies can find ways to change conduct and take action frankly on Kimmel or you know there's

going to be additional work for the FCC ahead ABCs hereby are basically on notice I mean look we

can do this the easy way or the hard way I can do this the easy way or the hard way and the implicit

threat there is that ABC's station licenses can be in trouble and ABC does suspend Kimmel's programming

for several days this is like the first real shock to the system that wow the FCC is now really

coming for late night so that's the beginning of it but for Sir and Carr late night is on the radar

which finally brings us up to January when the FCC undercar really institutionalizes their push

against late night you know the Kimmel instance was a bit more ad hoc right that happened in the

moment but now they put out this formal announcement that says here's the new policy we are going to

apply this old standard of equal time to the late night talk shows more regularly you're on notice by

the way that Leno exemption that was for Leno in 2006 we do not see it as applying to anything else

you've all been getting away with something and there's a new sheriff in town and it's over so

basically this lawyer from Wisconsin Daniel sir who had no previous experience in media law

he's the one who essentially put the equal time rule on Brendan Carr's radar right and that is

what has gotten us to this moment this campaign that we are now seeing from the FCC against late

night and ultimately this Colbert interview getting taken off the air very much so and what's

also clear is that this campaign is ongoing now it's been announced in the last several weeks that

in fact the FCC is investigating the view for bias and equal time violations and the view not late night

not late night but it's a talk show and it's if anything the view is a very powerful television show

still seen across the country delusant politics with pretty reliable voters who watch it every day

how exactly is car proposing going after these shows like not only what are the mechanics of that

but can he just unilaterally undo the exemption here i mean on the exemption what he's arguing is

that he's not undoing anything that that exemption was for Leno and it doesn't apply now there's

something very important that we have to mention here and that is that legally i've yet to find a

lawyer who has said yes the FCC has a very strong case to take away licenses and xyz case that

Brendan Carr is talking about is just nobody thinks that the networks themselves don't think that

but the threat itself is very powerful it's not in any major media companies interest to be on the

wrong side of the federal government when the federal government's willing to dangle punishment

so you know even if the network should win in court do you want to be in court for months or

longer with the federal government nobody wants it i want to embody Daniel sir's argument for a

moment and perhaps Brendan Carr's perspective as well that television should be less biased we should

get this partisanship out of our programming that goes back to the spirit of when these laws were

first created so i can imagine why people would feel like late night television has gotten away

with something for very very long and this is a correction back to the initial positive spirit

with which these rules were intended well that is what chairman cars saying he told me that personally

but he said it elsewhere time and time again that all i'm doing is enforcing the law and i've heard

from a lot of experts here even liberal policy experts who actually think the FCC's on solid ground

here in terms of the equal time rule that late night has straight too far but even they question

is car evenly applying the rules could you should you be applying this then to talk radio you could

make an argument that talk radio could fall under this equal time rule if they have guests on within

certain election windows shan handy is on fox news at night but he's got one of the biggest

talk shows in radio millions of listeners should he get into trouble if he has a political

guest on around an election right i mean radio is not only the thing that started many of these

regulations but radio is huge yeah talk radio is on a weekly basis millions and millions of people

millions i mean if you took the collective audience for talk radio every day across all the

conservative shows i mean you dwarf a lot of what's on television in general and there's even

an argument that's getting made out there that in very technical terms if you're going to really

follow the letter of the law that when it comes to this very specific equal time rule that cable

could even fall under its terms which of course would really open up a whole can of worms with

networks like fox news so the application of the law could really go far if you're taking it that

literally but i think that there's a bigger play here and daniel sir would tell you there's a

bigger play here one of my hopes is that we clear the way for family friendly faith inspired

patriotic content and the hope that daniel sir has certainly the branding car has is that they

were going to forever now change the network dynamic it's not just that balance means getting

all this liberal stuff off the air right it's saying that red state consumers deserve content they

want to from their broadcaster right and my hope is that as we you know see shifts in the media

landscape we get more of that right and this is interesting because he's arguing that the FCC

is not just going to oversee some kind of great balancing act here but that it actually might

use its power to promote a certain kind of programming for a certain kind of audience with a

certain kind of taste which sounds like an activist FCC right and i can imagine that some people

might hear that and think well what happens if the other side of the aisle is in power that's the

warning from those conservatives that still view the FCC and its power here as as anethamada to

their ideology so senator tag crews is warned that if this happens now under us the democrats are

going to do it to our people then Shapiro has set that joe rogan has made his issue to similar

warning that if this happens here the other side's going to do it so there's a presumption

among some on the right that this is opening up a pendora's box that's best left to close

but clearly the administration is not persuaded by that argument right because as we said at the

top of this episode brennan car over the weekend is basically doubling down on this strategy

of going after coverage that he does not like and trying to influence coverage specifically of the war

what can we say about the various ways this could play out going forward

right i want to know first of all that there was more republican blowback this weekend with cars

a ram related message notably the republican senator from was constant ron johnson there was also

a lot of back and forth on social media between policy experts and car himself and journalist

as to what he could really do here but that said this is an amazing amount of pressure

on the networks to toe the line during war with real threats of governmental punishment

and let's remember aside from a ran we also have the congressional midterms coming up this fall

what happens if some of those elections are disputed over these flimsy allegations of fraud we saw

in 2020 how's that going to be handled and it's the FCC going to weigh in there

and then let's bring it back to the late night shows the administration has made it clear that they

see those as part of the political arena are these late night shows going to stop booking politicians

all together the short of it is you know we'll wait and we'll see but in our lifetimes we have never

seen the federal government get involved this much in content decisions and policing content decisions

on broadcast television

Jim Rootenberg thank you as always thanks so much for having me

we'll be right back

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here's what else you need to know today israel said it had dealt double blows to the upper

echelons of Iran's leadership on Tuesday killing Ali larjani the head of the country's supreme

national security council and brigadier general golem resa sulemani the head of a powerful

militia aligned with the Islamic revolutionary guard corps the killings were announced hours before

president trump lashed out again against nato allies who have rebuffed his attempts to draw

them into the war in Iran speaking in the oval office he said the united states did not quote

need or desire any help to open the strait of hormones and added that he was quote disappointed in

nato and one of the united states top counterterrorism officials resigned on Tuesday citing his

opposition to the war in aron and what he said was israel's influence over the trump administration's

policies the official jokent is the first senior member of the administration to quit over the war

quote i cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in aron mr. kent wrote in a letter to

mr trump quote aron posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war

due to pressure from israel and it's powerful american lobby

today's episode was produced by alex stern rickie nabetsky marie wilson and diana win

it was edited by robsipko with help from michael benwha fact checked by susan lee and contains music

by pat McCusker marie and lasano dan powell rooney misto and elisha but youtube

our theme music is by wonderly this episode was engineered by chris wood

that's it for the daily i'm reach your labrums see you tomorrow

you