Brian Stelter

And that's not going away either, right, Dan?

In other words, this is, this tug of war is still very much, it's still ongoing.

I think every time a major media company appears to be caving, a new substack is born, a new podcast is born, a new YouTube stream is born.

You know, right now, Kimmel's racking up millions of views for his ABC monologue, but if this goes south, if Disney comes under more government pressure, if the DOJ starts blocking Disney's deals, if Kimmel's show ends next May,

He'll probably be bigger than ever on podcasts.

Yes, in some cases they can.

And some First Amendment scholars wish ABC had gone that route last week.

They wish ABC had gone to court.

i think the reason that didn't happen was because this happened so quickly like literally from 1pm to 5pm eastern time on wednesday afternoon all of this went down all this erupted and abc did what was maybe what they believed was smartest in the moment if this had happened with a little bit more time less time constraints fewer time pressures that legal route may have been the one and

You know, it's important to keep an eye on the courts here because the New York Times throwing out Trump's defamation suit last week.

Sorry, the New York, not New York.

A Florida judge throwing out Trump's suit against the New York Times last week is an example of how the courts are the ultimate backstop here.

I don't want to sound hyperbolic because America is a whole hell of a lot bigger and stronger than an Eastern European landlocked country like Hungary.

We're very different than Hungary.

President Trump is different than Viktor Orban in some ways, but the parallels between the US and Hungary are really striking right now.

Orban's control of the media, his consolidation of power, his attempts to weaken public broadcasting and break the backs of independent media and privatize media companies with the control of the state, all of that is very eerily similar to what Trump is attempting and to some of what's happened in the past nine months.

I've talked to former Hungarian members of parliament and other experts who have studied Hungary's democratic backsliding and more authoritarian moves.

They say that what they're seeing in the U.S.

is very similar.

So, you know, if you want to nerd out this weekend, go read about Hungary.