How Bad Is It?: Trump’s War on Comedians

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins Tyler Foggatt for the latest installment of “How Bad Is It?,” a monthly series on the health of American democracy. Their guest is Roy Wood, Jr., the host of the satirical program “Have I Got News for You,” on CNN. The group discusses the significance of CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a recent episode of “South Park” that is searingly critical of Donald Trump, and the President’s deployment of lawsuits and the administrative state to try to intimidate his critics in the media and entertainment industries. “There's always going to be these petty, ticky-tack battles that the Administration fights,” says Wood. “But I don't think that's gonna stop the comedians from doing what Trump hopes this would do, which is silence them.”

This week’s reading:

“‘South Park” Skewers a Satire-Proof President,’ by Tyler Foggatt
“What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Means,” by Vinson Cunningham
“How the Israeli Right Explains the Aid Disaster It Created,” by Isaac Chotiner
“Should Police Officers Be More Like U.F.C. Fighters?,” by Sam Eagan
“Is Brazil’s Underdog Era Coming to an End?,” by Shannon Sims

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Transcript

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0:59.9	Hey, Tyler.
1:00.7	Good to be here.
1:01.5	Thanks for being here.
1:02.2	And welcome back to the fourth episode of our special series, How Bad Is It, where you
1:08.3	and I conduct a monthly checkup on the health of our democracy. Yeah. I don't know if these checkups have been getting better or worse. It's hard to tell. I've sort of, I find it all so confusing. I mean, this one, though, this I guess is like our, is comedy under threat episode? Yeah. I mean, I think this is one of the rare times where there is a media story that matters as much to us, members of the press as it does to the rest of America and just people who care about television and watch it.
1:35.8	The big news this week has been, you know, first you have the defunding of NPR and PBS.
1:40.2	And then the most high profile story has been this Paramount Skydance merger and the cancellation of the late show with Stephen Colbert.
1:50.3	Paramount and CBS said that it was a financial decision. But there also seem to be all of these other factors that are not very financial.
1:58.9	And then at the same time, you also have this episode of South Park that just came out, South Park, you know, being owned by Paramount, which is just totally skewering Trump.
2:08.4	Yeah.
	...

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