Doom Report (Week 40: A Nazi Streak, from Time to Time)

On this week’s Coffee Klatch, Heather Lofthouse and Rober Reich talk about the guy with a “Nazi streak” who, surprisingly, had to withdraw from consideration from the second job that Trump wanted to give him (I believe he’s still retaining his first job).  Stephen Colbert compared this to a casserole with a streak of poop.  Seth Meyers compared it to a waiter telling you about tonight’s special, which comes with a streak of poison.  But Reich, with his typical optimism, focussed on the Senate Republicans finally taking a stand.  He and Heather had this exchange:

Robert: Even Senate Republicans ... said this is too much.
Heather: Even though he’s a Trump loyalist. So that gave me a little bit of—
Robert: Yes, there’s a bottom.
Heather: Oh ... yeah.
Robert: There is a bottom, at least for the Senate Republicans.
Heather: Right.  Um—
Robert: No, that’s that’s good news, and we should celebrate the good news.

I’m not sure I’m taking away as much hope as Reich seems to have, but I respect the perspective.

Other things you need to know this week:

• As usual, Adam Kinzinger’s week in review is invaluable for understanding the latest debacles.

• Seth Meyers has takes A Closer Look at Trump’s new construction project.  Where’s the money coming from?  Maybe from the $230 million he plans to pay himself.

• The Even More News crew has some views on the Graham Platner controversy, although they don’t come to any actual decisions; their take on the Argentina bailout is more on point.

This week Alex Wagner’s new show Runaway Country debuted ... as a YouTube “podcast” in the Crooked Media network (which also encompasses Strict Scrutiny and Pod Save the UK, two shows I regularly recommend here).  The first episode (titled “How Trump Broke America’s Justice System”) is out, and it’s pretty good, if you can spare just over an hour (closer to 45min, if you crank it up to 1.25x and skip the ads).  I like Alex, though I’ve never watched a single one of her network shows, because I don’t watch network news.  But she shows up on Colbert or Meyers every now and again, and I always enjoy her political takes, so I gave the new show a shot.  Don’t know if I’ll become a regular viewer, but I certainly don’t feel I wasted my time watching it or anything.

But I mainly mention it because Alex is the latest in a long line—which includes Trevor Noah, Mehdi Hasan, Francesca Fiorentini, Don Lemon, and even Tucker Carlson—to abandon network news shows and transition to online media.  For years, the YouTube and Twitch and TikTok crowd have been telling us that broadcast and cable is dead, but it seemed like it would be a long, lingering death where the patient continues to do quite well, thank you.  Lately, though, corporate America has been hastening the demise by pushing out anyone who is even remotely controversial—and, since the vast majority of corporate America is right-wing, anyone who is even remotely progressive—which only makes their shows boring and even more unwatchable than they were before.  Now, as I say, I was never a fan of network news anyway, but I continued to watch The Daily Show and Colbert (they’re literally the only reasons I keep paying for Paramount+) and Last Week Tonight; Meyers and Kimmel I’ve already transitioned to just watching YouTube clips.  But now Colbert is cancelled and will be gone in May, and I don’t see John Oliver being long for this world either, now that HBO Max is on the chopping block.  I mean, I ditched my cable a long time ago, so I suppose it’s only a matter of time until I bid farewell to Paramount+ and just start watching The Daily Show on YouTube as well.

Of course, the online streaming industry has a lot of issues too, and there’s too many of them, and most of them are too expensive, but YouTube is still free at least (you can certainly pay for YouTube Premium, but it’s far too much money to avoid the ads that any decent ad blocker will take care of for you for free), and, if that’s where all the content is going anyway ...

It’s an interesting time, certainly.  I don’t know what will eventually happen, but I’m interested to see how it all shakes out.