Daily Kos87%
Trump’s FCC cronies get in on the sweet bribe action 92%
By Lisa Needham99%
7/15/2026, 11:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Framing Effect, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 91% saturation with 447 hits. Analysis detected 1,997 faulty-reasoning hits from 491 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 87.2% and a BS Rank of 92% (1,409 of 16,550 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 91.50% of the article peer group.
Why should President Donald Trump have all the fun of extorting money from people with business before the government?
How ‘bout letting the folks in charge of the Federal Communications Commission get a taste, hmmm?
ProPublica broke the news that both FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty and FCC Chair Brendan Carr got a little treat—nothing really, just a small token of appreciation from Paramount, for voting to approve the wholly corrupt, bribe-fueled media merger between Paramount and Skydance.
Paramount said thanks to Trusty with over $12,000 worth of tickets to the Kennedy Center Honors last December, while Carr chilled in a private skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison.
Those skybox seats go for a cool $125,000 each.
Related | ‘Bribery is still illegal’: Paramount merger reeks of Trump payoff
Now, to be fair, we don’t know for sure if Carr got that from Paramount because, well, the FCC hasn’t bothered to make his financial disclosure for 2025 public.
Because transparency is for suckers. .
ProPublica also found this isn’t Carr’s first rodeo, sleaze-wise.
Since being appointed by Trump in 2017, Carr has lined his pockets with free tickets to the tune of over $63,000.
Well, that’s counting the tickets we know about.
It’s getting really, really boring to keep saying that government officials are not supposed to routinely take bribe money, but given that is Trump’s entire ethos, of course, this is how his appointees behave as well.
Indeed, even if Carr somehow, on his government salary of $209,000 per year, picked up the tab of $125K all by himself, this doesn’t make it any better.
Palling around at a glittery event for the elite in the same box as the companies you regulate?
Looks bad.
Of course, it’s also bad to demand that broadcasters pledge fealty to a very Trumpy view of “patriotism” and to threaten them for accurately reporting on Trump’s disastrous war in Iran.
To be scrupulously fair to Trusty and Carr, it feels more like a punishment than a treat to have been required to sit through the half-assed, has-been 2025 edition of the Kennedy Center Honors.
KISS?
Sylvester Stallone?
The comedic stylings of Donald J.
Trump?
Leave us out.
The timing of these treats, though, highlights the dual, past/present nature of this particular brand of Trumpian corruption.
At the time of the fancy Kennedy Center shindig, the Paramount-Skydance merger was already a done deal.
However, this also happened just as Paramount was launching its hostile takeover of Warner Bros—which, of course, is a huge antitrust violation, but we don’t really care about that anymore.
Instead, it’s been left to the states to step in and try to head off the latest mega media merger and to prop up the increasingly threadbare rule of law.
Someone’s got to, because Brendan Carr definitely isn’t going to do it.
He knows who he serves, and it’s not the American people.
Analysis
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