Open-Air Extortion Markets
Is it more dangerous for the regime to make threats publicly or privately?
1. The Hard Way
What would have happened if Brendan Carr had threatened ABC/Disney in private instead of on a podcast?
Or, to put it another way, are we lucky that the Trump administration carried out unconstitutional extortion in public?
This is an interesting question because it elucidates how power works, how much power Donald Trump currently possesses, and how he may wield it next.
Let’s game out the counterfactual: What would have happened if Brendan Carr had simply called Perry Sook, the CEO of Nexstar, and told him that if the company’s affiliates did not refuse to air Jimmy Kimmel’s show, then approval for the Nexstar-Tegna merger would go “the hard way”?
And what if Carr then called Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, and told him that local affiliates were bailing and that if Kimmel’s show wasn’t pulled off the air, then ABC’s FCC licenses would be re-examined “the hard way”?
Then last week would have gone something like this: