From Colbert to Epstein to Breonna Taylor, a roundup of today’s terrible news from Trumpworld

There is so much awful Trump-related news to make sense of today that I’m going to offer a roundup, though I doubt I’ll attain the eloquence or profundity of Heather Cox Richardson. I’ll begin with two stories that are puzzling once you look beneath the surface — CBS’s decision to cancel Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and The Wall Street Journal’s report on Trump’s pervy birthday greetings to Jeffrey Epstein.

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First, Colbert. Late-night television isn’t what it used to be, though Colbert’s program was the highest-rated among the genre. Like most people, I never watched, and what little I did see of it was through YouTube clips. Still, it’s only natural to think that he was canceled because CBS’s owner, Paramount, which recently gifted Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit, is trying to win favor as it seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance. Colbert is an outspoken Trump critic, and he hasn’t been shy about taking on his corporate overlords, either.

If that’s the case, it seems odd to announce that Colbert’s show will run through next May. That makes no sense if the idea is to appease Trump. If it’s a contractual matter, Colbert could be paid to stay home. Now he’s free to unload on Trump and network executives every night without having to worry about whether his show will be renewed. And for those who argue that Colbert is on a short leash: No, he isn’t. I suspect we’ll learn more.

Now for that Wall Street Journal story (gift link). I don’t want to minimize the importance of Trump’s demented message and R-rated drawings that he gave to Epstein for his 50th birthday. There was a time in public life when it would have — and should have — been a major scandal. But I didn’t think the article quite lived up to its advance billing. Before publication, media reporter Oliver Darcy called it “potentially explosive” and wrote about Trump’s personal efforts to kill it, but I’m not sure that it is.

Don’t misunderstand me. The letter is really bad, concluding with an eye-opening “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump claims that the letter is a fake and is threatening to sue the Journal, so it seems that the paper hit its mark. But am I wrong to have expected something more? Maybe there’s a follow-up in the works and the Journal hasn’t been able to nail it down yet. Maybe they’re hoping that this story shakes loose more sources.

And by the way: Before you give too much credit to the Murdochs for standing up to Trump, keep in mind that their far larger and more influential media outlet, Fox News, won’t touch this. Although it’s admirable that the Murdochs have maintained the Journal as a tough, independent news outlet, their cable propaganda vehicle remains all MAGA, all the time.

Also on Thursday, Congress finalized a package to claw back $9 billion in previously approved spending, including $1.1 billion for public television and radio over the next two years. As many news stories have pointed out, the direct effect on PBS and NPR will be fairly minimal, but local stations in some rural areas will be devastated. Moreover, local public radio stations pay fees for NPR’s national programming, so even though NPR receives only about 1% of its funding directly from the federally funded (until now) Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the real-world effect will be greater than that.

The New York Times has published a map and a chart showing where cuts will hit the hardest. I don’t see a way to share a gift link, so I’m hoping it’s not behind the Times’ paywall. As you’ll see, Massachusetts is among the states that will be least affected by the cuts. Maine and Alaska will be devastated, which explains why Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the only two members of their party to vote no.

Earlier this week, NPR’s David Folkenflik reported on how cuts will play out at public TV and radio stations in Indiana, which are already suffering the effects of an end to state subsidies. Yogev Toby reports in The Boston Globe about the challenges now facing public media outlets in some of the more remote parts of New England.

The bottom line is that rural and less affluent parts of the country are going to lose a crucial source of local and regional news, going well beyond possible cuts to national newscasts such as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” As I told Andrea Bambino of Agence France-Presse, for remote communities “these stations are an absolute lifeline. This is where people go to find out a tornado is coming” in addition to other emergency news.

We also learned Thursday that Trump has been diagnosed with a medical condition called chronic venous insufficiency, which causes swelling of the legs and ankles as the heart loses its capacity to pump blood through the circulatory system.

Every news report I’ve seen describes the problem as minor, echoing the White House that the problem is “benign and common” in an elderly man. Well, no one, especially a journalist, wants to diagnose someone from afar, but there is some scientific evidence of a correlation between the condition and dementia.

For instance, the abstract to this 2019 medical journal article begins: “There has been an increasing appreciation of the role of vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) associated with old age.” The title: “Role of age-related alterations of the cerebral venous circulation in the pathogenesis of vascular cognitive impairment.” Trump’s diagnosis comes amid his increasingly addled public pronouncements, including one earlier this week in which he blasted Fed chair Jerome Powell while seeming to forget that it was he who appointed Powell during his first term.

I’d say it’s time for some deep reporting by science and health journalists to find out exactly what is known about the effects of chronic venous insufficiency.

Finally, the top story across the country on Thursday should have been the Trump Justice Department’s sickeningly racist recommendation that former police officer Brett Hankison be sentenced to just one day in prison for his role in the shooting death Breonna Taylor in 2020.

The facts of the case are complicated, as you can read here, but among those facts is that Hankison was convicted of violating Taylor’s civil rights, a crime for which he could be sentenced to life in prison. Taylor’s death and the police murder of George Floyd kicked off the second wave of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now the fight for racial justice is receding into the past.