On February 29, 2016, former CBS CEO Les Moonves was discussing then-candidate Donald Trump’s nascent presidential bid in front of a group of wealthy potential media investors. He admitted openly that Trump’s run for the presidency “may not be good for America, but it’s good for CBS.”
Moonves went on: “Donald Trump is damn good for business; the money’s rolling in. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
Needless to say, Donald did keep going. And in the intervening 10 years, Trump has made billions of dollars for the news and entertainment industry (and for himself and his family).
Putting Trump on the air every day has meant “damn good business” for the networks — large and small, network and cable — as well as for podcasts, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, TikTok, and for almost every other iteration of media you can name. Trump-related content is the most profitable reality show in history. It’s on every day, and producing it costs these organizations very little — except their news credibility — but we appear to be way past worrying about that at this point.
Heck, CBS itself is now owned by right-wing billionaires who are laughing all the way to the banks (that they also own) as they destroy 60 Minutes. Not to mention such “competitors” as Fox News, The Washington Post, and soon CNN, to name but a few.
In 1961, at the end of his second term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower offered a warning to the American people: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
Eisenhower’s words were prescient. The influence of this country’s unholy alliance between industrial weapons builders and the U.S. military has helped drag the U.S. into numerous armed conflicts in the years since his speech. But the new and perhaps even more dangerous force that’s shaping the American “councils of government” is the “entertainment-industrial” complex. It’s wiping out all the once-sacred standards of news and journalism: reporting the facts with impartiality and fairness, digging for the truth no matter where it lies, and fearlessly speaking that truth to power, regardless of who’s in office. Those standards have been replaced by a new credo: “Who can get the most eyeballs?”
This was all predicted 30 years ago in a book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Postman warned about the trend of TV news being packaged as entertainment, with theme music, flashy graphics, anchors with movie-star looks, and breathless, dramatic reporting designed to draw viewers more interested in drama than truth. Amusement is king. News is secondary. Truth is irrelevant.
Last Sunday night, we may have witnessed the ultimate playing out of Postman’s prediction that we will “amuse ourselves to death,” when Trump, the U.S. military, and the for-profit Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) partnered to stage cage matches on what was once the White House lawn. The spectators — hand-picked photogenic U.S. service members, administration officials, and Trump allies — cheered the fighters on as they pummeled and bloodied each other inside an octagon festooned with ads for cryptocurrency. One fighter climbed on the ropes after winning his match and screamed “Michelle Obama is a man!” to the cheers of the crowd. Good times.
Trump himself had a front-row seat, along with Meta/Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg, new CNN owner David Ellison, and other assorted billionaires. In between rounds, the UFC’s “Octagon Girls” strutted around in revealing star-spangled bathing suits.
It was crass, tasteless, sexist, racist, and pointless. It was an empty, noisy spectacle with no redeeming human value. It was sound and fury, signifying nothing — an ode to humanity’s lowest aspirations, played out on the grounds of what was once the People’s House but what is now a scraped and degraded piece of real estate that looks like the aftermath of a meth-fueled home explosion. The White House has become the White Trash House. I don’t know about you, but I’m not amused.
