The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Nexstar looked at federal law saying a broadcaster shouldn't control more than about 39% of U.S. TV households and said, "What if we just did 80% instead?" The FCC and DOJ, now apparently functioning as the White House's in-house merger concierge service, shrugged, stamped it approved, and posed for photos. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr even flexed a selfie with the acting antitrust chief just days after they both green-lit Nexstar’s $6.2 billion gobble-up of Tegna, because when you're vaporizing media-ownership rules, you obviously need content for the gram.

The deal hands Nexstar 265 local stations across 44 states plus D.C., giving one Trump-friendly corporation staggering control over what counts as "local" news. And just to make sure the vibes were right, Nexstar pulled Jimmy Kimmel from its ABC stations after Carr publicly fantasized about pushing him off the air, then juiced up its cable arm NewsNation with pro-Trump pundit Katie Pavlich and a growing roster of Fox News refugees. Trump briefly pretended to weigh the deal, then smashed the big red button on Truth Social: "GET THAT DEAL DONE!" Four hours later, Carr obediently echoed the boss. Now a federal court in California is being asked to do the thing the regulators were supposed to: stop a politically wired media monopoly from jacking up prices, gutting newsrooms, and turning "local" coverage into a single corporate talking point.

So yes, under this administration, antitrust law is less about protecting competition and more about rewarding loyal broadcasters who yank the wrong comedians and hire the right MAGA influencers. The message from Trump-world is clear: align your newsroom with the president’s ego, and suddenly legal ownership caps become suggestions and 80% of American households is just a fun number on a slide deck.

Donald Trump rolled out of his Truth Social bunker last night to endorse former Fox News host and David Cameron sidekick Steve Hilton for California governor, because why wouldn’t the largest state in the country be run by a guy whose main qualification is once yelling at liberals on cable news?

Trump promised that “as President, I will help him” and that “with Federal help, and a Great Governor, like Steve Hilton, California can be better than ever before!” Subtle as a brick: elect my guy and maybe the federal government will stop treating the country’s biggest economy like an enemy state. Elect anyone else and enjoy four more years of disaster tourism from Mar-a-Lago.

The GOP field is basically Hilton vs. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, while eight Democrats politely reenact the Spider-Man pointing meme in California’s jungle primary. Polls show no clear frontrunner and a non-trivial chance of a two-Republican general, which is why the state party chair is begging low-polling Democrats to stop cosplaying as viable candidates. Meanwhile, Hilton is out here promising tax cuts, homeownership, and better test scores, as if the main structural barrier to California’s future was not enough Steve Hilton in it.

So the Trump machine is now explicitly offering a loyalty rewards program for governors: say the right things on TV, get the presidential seal of approval and a vague promise of extra federal goodies. It’s not quite handing out ambassadorships to donors, but it’s the same basic model—just with more wildfire risk and a much bigger GDP.

Under Donald "man of the people" Trump, billionaire fortunes hit all-time highs while the federal minimum wage stayed frozen at $7.25, like a museum exhibit from a time when groceries didn’t cost your firstborn. Oxfam reports that in the year after Trump’s re-election, billionaire wealth grew three times faster than in the previous five years, which is what happens when you pass tax laws written like a love letter to private jets and stock buybacks.

Out in the real world, people like Karen Sanchez are spending their free time at breweries asking strangers if they’d like to mildly inconvenience Elon Musk’s net worth. California’s pushing a one-time 5% wealth tax on its 200+ billionaires to patch the holes blown in hospital and education funding, while states like Massachusetts and Minnesota are already using millionaire taxes to do radical things such as feeding kids and fixing roads. At the federal level, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna have the audacity to propose that billionaires pay an annual 5% wealth tax, which in Trump’s America ranks somewhere between arson and treason.

Polls show about 70% of Americans think the system is rigged for corporations and the wealthy, possibly because the system is very obviously rigged for corporations and the wealthy. After Trump’s 2017 and 2025 tax cuts shoveled money to the top, CEOs of the five biggest US companies are averaging $52 million a year while the people who actually keep the country functioning are told to be grateful for "opportunity" and maybe some pizza in the break room. So yes, billionaire fortunes are soaring, and so is the movement to finally send them a tax bill that isn’t written in crayon by their lobbyists.

The Department of Homeland Security shuts down, TSA officers are working for free like it's an unpaid internship from hell, airports are collapsing into pure chaos – and Clear Secure’s stock is up 57%. Truly, the free market has spoken: why fund a functioning government when you can just pay $209 a year to skip past the peasants in line while the people actually doing security work can’t afford gas?

Clear’s app downloads jumped 625% in a single Sunday because nothing motivates Americans like the chance to buy their way out of a crisis the government created. TSA workers are unpaid, lines are "sprawling", and Clear helpfully deploys 3,500 "ambassadors" to manage the mess and toss out $200,000 in gas and grocery cards – a tidy PR write-off to paper over the fact that the shutdown that’s wrecking people’s lives is a growth opportunity on their earnings call.

And as the public system crumbles, TSA is partnering with Clear to roll out biometric e-gates that don’t need a human operator. So the government underpays and demoralizes its workforce, then quietly tests out replacing them with retina scanners run by a private company whose business model depends on permanent dysfunction at the checkpoints. What a coincidence. American travelers “deserve better,” Clear’s executive says – and by “better” he clearly means a future where security is two-tiered: premium face-scan fast lane for those who can afford it, and a six-hour line for everyone else stuck inside the world’s most profitable shutdown.

Georgia’s GOP primary for governor was already a MAGA-themed demolition derby, and then billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson showed up, dumped a promised $50 million on the track, and asked voters if they’d like a second helping of 2016 Trump with slightly worse branding.

Jackson has spent nearly $16 million in a month introducing himself as a "straight-talking, Trump-supporting self-made outsider" who "doesn’t owe anybody anything" — a fun line from a man attempting to purchase the governor’s mansion with couch-cushion change. He launched his campaign by descending in a glass elevator to evoke Trump’s golden escalator entrance, because if you’re going to cosplay as an authoritarian-adjacent cult leader, you might as well commit to the bit.

While Trump has already endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Jackson is running a delicate little fanboy operation: he’s not touching Jones, but he is airing an ad calling Brad Raffensperger — the Republican who refused Trump’s request to help steal Georgia in 2020 — a "Judas" who "turned on his own kind." That spot conveniently aired in D.C. and West Palm Beach media markets, just in case a certain Florida resident needed his ego stroked between indictments.

The result: a billionaire oligarch trying to buy a governorship, a Trump-endorsed candidate, the state’s top law enforcement officer, and the secretary of state who once defended basic democracy all clawing for the same MAGA base. Georgia Republicans aren’t just running a primary; they’re holding auditions for who can best punish the guy who wouldn’t help Trump overturn an election — and who can spend the most to do it.