Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
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Authoritarian Watch
/ February 20, 2026
Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
MAGA’s hate machine is—at least temporarily—sputtering.
Sasha Abramsky
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Official portraits of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance displayed at the Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, February 18, 2026.
(Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Monday, late-night host Stephen Colbert attempted to interview Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico. Instead of this being a routine nothing-to-write-home-about few minutes chat with a little-known Texas state representative, Colbert ran into a legal wall: CBS’s attorneys told the broadcaster to pull the interview after Trump’s FCC argued that late-night-show interviews of political candidates from one party but not the other violate federal regulations. The network allegedly advised the host that he shouldn’t even discuss on-air that it had put the kibosh on the interview.
Colbert wasn’t amused. Not only did he proceed to talk about it on the air; he interviewed Talarico and posted it on YouTube, where, within two days, the clip had garnered some 7.8 million views.
A week ago, polls showed Representative Jasmine Crockett leading Talarico by eight points. If Talarico ends up winning his primary in Texas and then goes on to win the general election against the front-runner to be the GOP’s nominee, Texas’s far-right attorney general, Ken Paxton—who avoided a likely conviction for securities fraud two years ago by taking a plea bargain and agreeing to do community service—he will have Trump’s anti–First Amendment FCC to thank for his meteoric rise to national prominence.
Polling conducted before the Colbert interview of a hypothetical Talarico-Paxton matchup shows the race to be a toss-up. And now CBS’s pandering to the Trump administration over the Colbert interview has given the Democrat a crucial publicity boost just as early voting in the March 3 primaries gets underway. Indeed, many of the more than 65,000 commenters on the YouTube video specifically thanked the FCC for bringing the interview, and the candidate, to their attention.
“A threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights,” Talarico explained to Colbert, in reacting to the attempts to censor him. The audience roared its approval. For the next 14 minutes, Talarico hit rhetorical home run after home run, denouncing the hypocrisies of Christian Nationalism—“people baptizing their partisanship and calling that Christianity”—attacking the xenophobia of the MAGA movement, and explaining how the real fight …
What's the administration thinking here?
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Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
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Current Issue
Authoritarian Watch
/ February 20, 2026
Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
MAGA’s hate machine is—at least temporarily—sputtering.
Sasha Abramsky
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Official portraits of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance displayed at the Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, February 18, 2026.
(Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Monday, late-night host Stephen Colbert attempted to interview Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico. Instead of this being a routine nothing-to-write-home-about few minutes chat with a little-known Texas state representative, Colbert ran into a legal wall: CBS’s attorneys told the broadcaster to pull the interview after Trump’s FCC argued that late-night-show interviews of political candidates from one party but not the other violate federal regulations. The network allegedly advised the host that he shouldn’t even discuss on-air that it had put the kibosh on the interview.
Colbert wasn’t amused. Not only did he proceed to talk about it on the air; he interviewed Talarico and posted it on YouTube, where, within two days, the clip had garnered some 7.8 million views.
A week ago, polls showed Representative Jasmine Crockett leading Talarico by eight points. If Talarico ends up winning his primary in Texas and then goes on to win the general election against the front-runner to be the GOP’s nominee, Texas’s far-right attorney general, Ken Paxton—who avoided a likely conviction for securities fraud two years ago by taking a plea bargain and agreeing to do community service—he will have Trump’s anti–First Amendment FCC to thank for his meteoric rise to national prominence.
Polling conducted before the Colbert interview of a hypothetical Talarico-Paxton matchup shows the race to be a toss-up. And now CBS’s pandering to the Trump administration over the Colbert interview has given the Democrat a crucial publicity boost just as early voting in the March 3 primaries gets underway. Indeed, many of the more than 65,000 commenters on the YouTube video specifically thanked the FCC for bringing the interview, and the candidate, to their attention.
“A threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights,” Talarico explained to Colbert, in reacting to the attempts to censor him. The audience roared its approval. For the next 14 minutes, Talarico hit rhetorical home run after home run, denouncing the hypocrisies of Christian Nationalism—“people baptizing their partisanship and calling that Christianity”—attacking the xenophobia of the MAGA movement, and explaining how the real fight …
Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
What's the administration thinking here?
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Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
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Current Issue
Authoritarian Watch
/ February 20, 2026
Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost
MAGA’s hate machine is—at least temporarily—sputtering.
Sasha Abramsky
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Official portraits of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance displayed at the Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, February 18, 2026.
(Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Monday, late-night host Stephen Colbert attempted to interview Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico. Instead of this being a routine nothing-to-write-home-about few minutes chat with a little-known Texas state representative, Colbert ran into a legal wall: CBS’s attorneys told the broadcaster to pull the interview after Trump’s FCC argued that late-night-show interviews of political candidates from one party but not the other violate federal regulations. The network allegedly advised the host that he shouldn’t even discuss on-air that it had put the kibosh on the interview.
Colbert wasn’t amused. Not only did he proceed to talk about it on the air; he interviewed Talarico and posted it on YouTube, where, within two days, the clip had garnered some 7.8 million views.
A week ago, polls showed Representative Jasmine Crockett leading Talarico by eight points. If Talarico ends up winning his primary in Texas and then goes on to win the general election against the front-runner to be the GOP’s nominee, Texas’s far-right attorney general, Ken Paxton—who avoided a likely conviction for securities fraud two years ago by taking a plea bargain and agreeing to do community service—he will have Trump’s anti–First Amendment FCC to thank for his meteoric rise to national prominence.
Polling conducted before the Colbert interview of a hypothetical Talarico-Paxton matchup shows the race to be a toss-up. And now CBS’s pandering to the Trump administration over the Colbert interview has given the Democrat a crucial publicity boost just as early voting in the March 3 primaries gets underway. Indeed, many of the more than 65,000 commenters on the YouTube video specifically thanked the FCC for bringing the interview, and the candidate, to their attention.
“A threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights,” Talarico explained to Colbert, in reacting to the attempts to censor him. The audience roared its approval. For the next 14 minutes, Talarico hit rhetorical home run after home run, denouncing the hypocrisies of Christian Nationalism—“people baptizing their partisanship and calling that Christianity”—attacking the xenophobia of the MAGA movement, and explaining how the real fight …
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