How "The View" could put an end to Trump's war on the media

[marmar]

How “The View” could put an end to Trump’s war on the media
ABC is finally fighting back against censorship and pressure from the Federal Communications Commission

By Sophia Tesfaye
Senior Writer
Published May 13, 2026 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) ABC’s entry into the media’s ongoing era of corporate capitulation under Donald Trump was not promising. In December 2024, just one day after a judge ordered both Trump and network anchor George Stephanopoulos to sit for depositions in a defamation suit legal observers widely considered frivolous, the network’s parent company Disney folded. ABC paid Trump $15 million for his presidential foundation, covered another million in his legal fees and published an editor’s note in which ABC News and Stephanopoulos declared they regretted past statements about the president-elect. Now the network may finally end Trump’s one-sided war against the media with a declaration that at least one major American media company has looked down the road of endless appeasement and understands where it leads: Nowhere that resembles a free press in a functioning democracy.

The pattern that emerges from all of this submission is ugly and familiar. You pay once, and the demands come back. Blackmailers always come back for more.

Brendan Carr, the co-author of Project 2025’s communications chapter who Trump installed as Federal Communications Commission chairman, has revived complaints against ABC, NBC and CBS that previous commissioners dismissed as obvious abuses of regulatory authority. He has threatened broadcasters over coverage Trump disliked. He investigated “60 Minutes” while Paramount was seeking merger approval, so Paramount settled Trump’s CBS lawsuit — centered on a routine edit of an October 2024 interview with Kamala Harris that TV networks perform every day — for $16 million, money that went to Trump’s presidential library. Rather than sign off on the deal, both the show’s executive producer and CBS News’ CEO resigned.

The unlikely vehicle is not some glamorous investigative exposé or Pulitzer-winning newsroom crusade. It is “The View,” the daytime talk show conservatives have spent years dismissing as unserious television. On Friday, ABC filed a 52-page petition with the FCC challenging the agency’s abrupt decision to limit the longstanding interpretation of the equal-time exemption for bona fide news programming — the provision that has shielded shows like “The View” and, by extension, the entire concept of editorial independence in broadcast news — for decades. Conveniently, this reinterpretation seems aimed almost entirely at programs Trump openly despises: daytime and late-night shows featuring his critics. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/05/13/how-the-view-could-put-an-end-to-trumps-war-on-the-media/

[UpInArms]

1. More from your link

These actions are not happening in isolation. They are part of a broader attempt to redefine journalism itself as a form of disloyalty. That’s why there is something clarifying about Glenn Beck defending “The View.” It strips away any pretense that this is a debate between liberal and conservative media bias, revealing that the dispute is between people who believe the government should be able to punish speech it dislikes, and people who understand that such a power, once established, does not stay pointed in one direction.

ABC found its spine late in the game. The $15 million lesson was expensive, and the suspension of Kimmel was a stain that won’t wash out easily. But the Clement filing is genuinely consequential, and not just because it might disarm Carr’s primary regulatory weapon if it survives judicial review. It matters because of what it signals to every other newsroom watching — every executive calculating the cost of compliance versus resistance, every journalist wondering whether their employer will protect them. The ladies of “The View” finally decided that a free press is worth defending.

[hlthe2b]

2. I have to admit, I'd love for ABC's Whoopi Goldberg-helmed "The View" to pevail...

Whoopi, in particular, though Joy Behar and the frequent former R Latina panel member, Anna Navarro, would definitely be part of that fight. The others--mostly filler from what I have seen in my admittedly (minimal) viewing history, but still...

[Wednesdays]

3. Every one of them hates Trump.

While Alyssa Farah Griffin was on maternity leave, they had some guest panelists to replace her. Some of them were MAGAts, and it was a jarring contrast. Alyssa, as the designated Republican on the panel, has little positive to say about The Felon, and has admitted to voting for Harris in 2024.

A good sign as to how far the Republican Party has fallen is Ana Navarro. She was an ardent Republican in Florida during Jeb Bush's term, and her husband was chairman of the American Conservative Union and chairman of the Florida Republican Party.

Now, Navarro spits fire at anything Republican, and is one of the most anti-Trump members of the panel.