from the it’s-Comcastic dept
Because of the federal government shutdown, federal workers are caught sitting in lengthy meals financial institution strains simply to outlive. Whereas President Trump is destroying the White Home east wing to put in a ballroom no one requested for. With none of the kind of approvals or safety clearances you’d must do it correctly.
Trump falsely claims to be funding the ballroom’s $300 million price ticket himself with the assistance of “patriotic donors.” However like several good grift, the worth is definite to skyrocket nicely past that by the point the ballroom is accomplished someday within the subsequent three years. And he’s definitely not paying for any of it himself, it’s largely being funded by the feckless shitweasels at Meta, Amazon, HP, Micron, Apple, Comcast, and T-Cellular. In addition to fascist ass kissers just like the Winklevoss twins.
You may recall that T-Cellular was caught up within the (now seemingly quaint) first Trump administration scandal involving affect patronage to Trump’s accommodations. Comcast’s fealty is a extra fascinating selection, given the Trump’s FCC’s latest habits of launching faux investigations into whether or not Comcast is being suitably racist and sexist sufficient for the administration’s liking.
Trump (and his FCC lackey Brendan Carr) additionally endlessly criticize Comcast CEO Brian Roberts any time the corporate’s NBC information operations have wandered too near the reality, like throughout its reporting on Abrego Garcia, a Maryland dad the Trump administration “by accident” kidnapped, despatched to a overseas gulag, introduced again, concocted new false prices towards, and is now attempting to deport to Liberia.
From Oliver Darcy’s e-newsletter:
“The choice by Comcast and different deep-pocketed donors to finance the mission underscores the grotesque dynamic between company America and the mercurial, transactional president: corporations overtly shopping for favor, or at the least hoping to remain off Trump’s enemies checklist. And for Comcast, the choice is deeply private. Trump has often attacked Roberts and his information retailers, publicly calling him a “lowlife” and mocking the company as “Concast.” The insults have continued even after the conglomerate spun off its cable networks, together with the Trump-loathed MSNBC and business-focused CNBC.”
Comcast’s help for Trump’s ballroom has put the NBC household of journalists (or what’s left of them after a latest spin off and mass layoffs) into a tough predicament as they cowl the mess on the air with out getting too pointed about Comcast’s pathetic capitulation:
“On NBC Information and MSNBC in latest days, anchors have taken pains to notice—generally with audible discomfort—that their company guardian, Comcast, is among the many donors serving to bankroll Trump’s ballroom. The transfer has left the community’s journalists within the awkward place of overlaying the story of their very own firm’s complicity. For Comcast and its chairman and chief govt, Brian Roberts, it marks a second of company humiliation, being publicly shamed on his personal air for deference to Trump, the identical vengeful president who has repeatedly focused Roberts by identify.”
Whereas Comcast could have suffered by way of a couple of barbs and pretend FCC investigations, many of the information protection oddly doesn’t point out the large advantages from the second Trump administration.
Along with a surge in taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks, the Trump administration has destroyed the what remained of purposeful U.S. federal company oversight. They’ve demolished not simply web neutrality however the entirety of FCC and FTC autonomy. Meaning little to no competent regulatory oversight of an organization with a multi-decade historical past of extraordinarily dodgy, anti-competitive, anti-consumer conduct.
The Trump assault on the regulatory state and courts has made it successfully not possible to carry firms like AT&T and Comcast accountable for actually something (see: AT&T’s spying on wi-fi subscribers). How a lot is the whole destruction of the federal regulatory state price over the following few many years? In all probability considerably greater than the hundreds of thousands Comcast is throwing on the ballroom.
The query for the pathetic simps at Comcast is: how excessive will the longer-term prices of capitulating with authoritarians be? These are weird, erratic zealots, whose usually incoherent calls for shift on a dime. And in nations like Russia, the place this kind of oligarch autocratic fusion has been allowed to fester, it typically doesn’t finish nicely for business leaders who wander too near home windows.
We will not be fairly there but, however we’re on the trail. The extent of corruption and affect peddling we’re seeing now makes the final three many years of U.S. historical past look positively quaint by comparability. And the pace with which the abject cowards within the U.S. enterprise neighborhood have fecklessly capitulated to the idiotic whims of mad tyrants isn’t one thing anyone’s more likely to neglect anytime quickly.
That mentioned, it’s not precisely a shock for me (any individual who has coated Comcast professionally for twenty years) that when push got here to shove, Comcast company wound up being a soulless ass kisser.
Filed Underneath: brian roberts, shopper safety, corruption, affect, telecom, trump ballroom
Firms: comcast, nbc common
