In an early morning rant, Donald Trump went off on Seth Meyers‘ late-night NBC show, declaring that “Comcast should pay a BIG price” for shows that he calls “political hits.”
In Trump’s 1:24 a.m. ET post on Truth Social, he said that he had watched Meyers’ show recently. Meyers’ humor for years has been biting when it comes to Trump, with his segments also serving as a form of commentary.
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Trump wrote, “How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ‘network’ run by a truly bad group of people — Remember, they also run MSDNC. I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast. These guys should be paying a lot of money for the right to give these ‘in kind’ contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party. These are not shows or entertainment, they are simply political hits, 100% of the time, to me and the Republican Party. Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”
Trump has long bashed Comcast, NBC and MSNBC. During his first term, he suggested pulling the network’s FCC license after he got angered by an NBC News report. Ajit Pai, who he appointed FCC chair, later noted that the agency licenses stations, not networks, and that news programming was protected by the First Amendment.
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But Trump’s appointee as chair of the FCC during his next term, Brendan Carr, has suggested that the agency can examine complaints over news programming, including one that challenged the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. He also bashed NBC for featuring Harris on Saturday Night Live in the final show before the election, warning that it was a violation of equal time rules. The network gave Trump’s campaign time the next day, but Carr warned that other third-party candidates may have been denied airtime.
Late Night with Seth Meyers has been in reruns this week. Trump’s comments are a contrast to President Joe Biden’s feelings about the show. Last year, he made an in-studio visit as the show marked its 10th anniversary.
Comcast is in the midst of spinning off MSNBC and other cable assets, something that may require regulatory approval. But media companies have been eyeing the Trump administration as potentially more permissive when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department challenged AT&T’s merger with Time Warner, then the parent company of CNN. AT&T won the case, but a number of Time Warner executives believed that the transaction was challenged because Trump so despised the reporting of its subsidiary, CNN.
In contrast, when Fox sought to sell many of its studio assets to Disney — a horizontal transaction that eliminated competition from the landscape — the transaction sailed through in just six months.