Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico estimated Thursday on “Morning Joe” that “many millions more” people watched his “Late Show” interview on YouTube than likely would have if it had aired on CBS.
Talarico also raised millions of dollars in the aftermath of Stephen Colbert revealing on Monday night how new FCC guidance had rattled CBS executives and drove the candidate interview to YouTube, where it’s received more than 8 million views, dwarfing previous “Late Show” clips on the platform.
The president’s tumultuous first term led to a “Trump bump” in subscriptions for legacy news outlets aggressively covering his administration, like the New York Times and Washington Post, and spiked ratings at CNN, which struck a more adversarial tone. In Trump 2.0, the primary beneficiaries haven’t been legacy organizations, but individuals like late-night hosts (Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel), politicians like Sen. Mark Kelly and independent journalists like Don Lemon, underscoring how personal the attacks have become.
These ordeals have elevated their profiles, dominated news cycles and brought the First Amendment to the forefront, but don’t come without a cost.
You saw this new script play out again and again over the last several months. Nielsen numbers are still a metric of success in Trump’s second term. Kimmel drew 6.3 million viewers in his return after being suspended last fall amid FCC pressure, his highest ratings in more than a decade. But the ABC host’s moving monologue spread even further on social media, racking up more than 26 million views by the following day, with 15 million of those on YouTube.
For Lemon, a former CNN host, success is now measured in movement to his own platforms. Since his Jan. 30 arrest, Lemon has gained 150,000 new subscribers on YouTube and 400,000 new followers on Instagram. He’s also registered 82% growth on Substack, where he boasts more than 145,000 followers.
Jim Acosta, a former CNN anchor now boasting more than a half-million followers across Substack and YouTube, recalled a classic line from Jurassic Park — “Life finds a way” — to frame how media is evolving in Trump’s second term.
“As these gutless cowards at these corporate media outlets continue to show their true colors, the American people are going to seek out alternatives and they’re going to find other ways to watch the content that they want to watch, to get the information that they want to get,” Acosta told TheWrap.
Acosta said “the public is just too sophisticated” to trust CBS’s claim that the the network was simply offering Colbert legal guidance and didn’t block the interview – a statement Colbert described as “crap.”
“I think that’s where we are in this moment,” he added. “It’s why Don is taking off. It’s why others are taking off [in the] Substack universe or YouTube universe. It’s just that people are just naturally going to these places now for their information. And it’s in part because of the capitulation of the news networks and institutions like the Washington Post.”
It’s not only media figures who have reaped financial benefits of Trump’s attacks, as Talarico and others can attest.
After Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and five other Democrats, released a video late last year urging US service members to reject illegal orders, Trump blasted their message as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened punitive action against Kelly, a retired Navy captain, and potentially prosecution; Kelly won a preliminary injunction halting that action earlier this month.
The saga was a fundraising boon for Kelly, leading to a slew of media appearances and generating buzz about his political future. As an Arizona Mirror headline asserted in a headline this week: “Trump’s call for Mark Kelly’s execution may have launched his campaign for president.”
“Some candidates may pop up and be flashier speakers,” Steven Smith, a political scientist at Arizona State University, told the publication. “But none of them will be as articulate. Kelly just commands your attention.”
Ups and downs in the attention economy
During the 2016 election, then-CBS chief executive Les Moonves infamously declared that Trump “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
Moonves relished the circus-like atmosphere that surrounded Trump’s first campaign as the media soaked up big ratings. But as CBS — and everyone has — has learned, getting on Trump’s bad side in a second term can be good for business, but not without consequences.
Lemon faces federal criminal charges over his reporting on an anti-ICE protest in St. Paul, Minnesota, and his arrest marked a dangerous escalation of Trump’s war on the press.
Paramount canceled Colbert’s show as it sought FCC approval to merge with Skydance; the company attributed the axing to “financial reasons,” which Colbert subtly mocked this week. The host’s latest clash with network brass highlights how Trump’s FCC is chilling speech on broadcast television.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr issued guidance last month suggesting daytime and late-night shows weren’t exempt from equal time provisions, as had long been accepted.
While Carr framed his actions as just following the law, he’s notably not targeting talk radio, where conservative discussion flourishes, and confirmed a probe this week into “The View” following its own interview with Talarico, who is locked in a primary battle with Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Trump, who amplified calls for Lemon’s arrest before it happened, told reporters after that he “didn’t know anything about it.” He also brushed off the arrest as probably “the best thing that could happen” to Lemon because “he’s in the news.”
Lemon clearly got a lot of media attention after the arrest, including sitting down down with Kimmel for his first TV interview. However, Lemon wasn’t so glib during an appearance this week on Acosta’s YouTube show, in which he said the motivation for arresting him was to “embarrass” and that “the process is the punishment.”
But Lemon suggested the press clampdown is backfiring.
“Most sane, rational thinking people understand there is a difference between a protester and a journalist,” Lemon said. “And they also understand when they’ve crossed a line from a democratic administration to an authoritarian regime, which is the territory we’re in now.”
While Lemon acknowledged his arrest may appeal to the MAGA faithful, he suggested that Trump doesn’t grasp perceptions more broadly, “knowing what’s happening in the zeitgeist, having a feel where public sentiment is.”
In an interview with TheWrap, Acosta recalled gaining hundreds of thousands of Twitter (now X) followers when the first Trump White House revoked his press pass, prompting a legal fight that he eventually won to restore access.
“They should know that when they do this, this is what’s going to happen. If you take and arrest Don Lemon, it is just going to elevate his profile,” Acosta said.
The downside of Trump’s wrath, in Acosta’s experience, was getting his home swatted, receiving death threats and needing to get bodyguards. “It changes your whole life,” he said.
And while the Lemon and Colbert episodes have brought free speech issues to the forefront of the national conversation, and that’s a “worthwhile” discussion to have, Acosta said, “we don’t want to lose the First Amendment in the process.”
“We don’t want it to get chipped away to the point where it’s sort of a First Amendment in name only,” he said, “and they’re chipping away at it as we speak.”
The public rallying behind TV hosts and journalists in the face of First Amendment threats is a positive development, but just over a year into Trump’s second term, the crackdown on speech and the press appears far from over.
