NEWS: Joking about Trump is now "illegal"?

Trump's third major attack on a comedian tells else where this is all going.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

Over the weekend, Donald Trump accused another late-night comedian of committing a crime against him, declaring that Seth Meyers’ jokes about the president were “probably illegal.” You can either ignore this as another Trump tirade, or you can see it for what it is: the president’s anti-free-speech campaign is surging ahead.

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WHAT HAPPENED

On Saturday, Trump erupted on Truth Social after apparently watching Late Night with Seth Meyers. He lashed out at the comedian, calling him a “deranged lunatic” and implying that the jokes Meyers makes are “100% ANTI-TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL.”

PROBABLY ILLEGAL. These are words to remember.

The presidential tantrum marks the third direct attack on an American comedian. First it was Stephen Colbert. Then it was Jimmy Kimmel. And now it’s Seth Meyers. The country’s top, late-night comedians have been effectively treated like enemies of the state for doing their jobs. Trump has demanded their shows be canceled, even bragging when networks briefly suspended Kimmel, despite his party’s claims to the contrary — that Trump’s administration had nothing to do with it. As always, he made his allies look like idiots by saying the quiet part out loud.

This time, Trump’s outrage was especially bizarre. He was mad about catapults. In one of his strangest long-running fixations, the president has spent years railing against the Navy’s shift from old-fashioned steam catapults to modern electromagnetic launch systems on aircraft carriers. He’s mocked the technology as “too complicated,” derided engineers from MIT for designing it, and demanded the military “go back to goddamn steam.” To Trump, the issue became a populist parable about “elites” and “wasteful modernization,” which is basically a metaphor for everything he hates about experts and change.

So when Seth Meyers joked that Trump “spends more time thinking about catapults than Wile E. Coyote,” the president was naturally infuriated. In Trump’s mind, to ridicule his pet grievance is to undermine his authority, which he insists should be illegal. You almost couldn’t ask for a sillier example of his authoritarian instincts.

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WHAT IT MEANS

As ridiculous as it all is, we have to keep taking it seriously.

I’ve written a lot about how Donald Trump is hellbent on criminalizing criticism. All the while, the MAGA-verse tried very hard to brush me off. My predictions about his second-term “revenge agenda” were met with derision and scorn. Trump called me “a phony” and said my forecasts were “make believe”; Stephen Miller said they were “malicious and preposterous”; and Trump’s belligerent spokesman accused me of being “a lying sack of shit” and publishing fake warnings that “should be repurposed as toilet paper,” among many other colorful denials.

And here we are.

It was always obvious that if Donald Trump returned he was going to do more than just rail against his critics. Much more. He was going to use the presidential bully pulpit to punish dissenters, whether they were (in his words) “disgruntled” former employees like me, or “deranged lunatics” like comedian Seth Meyers. Then that punishment would then be used as deterrence against other critics.

In this case, the message to NBC is loud and clear. Network executives are well aware that Trump has floated pulling broadcast licenses for major outlets and that his FCC has opened “content reviews” of networks critical of him. They’ve seen the president’s lawsuits against news organizations and historic capitulation settlements. So his post about Late Night is a message to the NBC higher ups: “I’m watching you!.”

The chilling effect of Trump’s pressure campaign is growing more visible by the week.

Look no further than CBS’s decision over the weekend to heavily edit Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, which was the network’s first with him in five years. After settling a $16 million lawsuit with Trump, CBS executives are in a capitulation process, including bringing in more MAGA-friendly editorial staff. Trump praised the network’s new owners and their “great new leader” Bari Weiss on-air, and it’s hard not to see the result. Whole sections of his 60 Minutes interview were cut that showed him rambling, bullying the interviewer, and repeating election lies.

In many ways, the censorship campaign is working. Networks have become more cautious, producers are over-editing, and even anchors are treading a little more lightly to avoid presidential wrath or costly lawsuits. Journalists tell me this in private almost every week. Trump himself openly gloated that CBS’s new ownership — headed by his billionaire allies David and Larry Ellison — is “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open press.” What he really meant to say was that he’s pleased that his meddling is warping coverage in his favor.

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WHAT’S NEXT

The president’s revenge campaign is beginning to hit its stride. In the meantime, everyone who said it was “hyperbole” to think Trump would weaponize the government now looks like a fool. In fact, to the people who promised “success” would be Trump’s revenge in a second term — not actual revenge — I would ask…

Have you seen his attacks on news networks and comedians? Or have you ignored the historic White House and FCC coercion of the media?

Have you been looking the other way while the president sends troops to crush protests? Or do you believe it’s really to quell “riots”?

What did you think when he branded the political opposition as “domestic extremists” and “terrorist organizations”? Did you think he was joking? Were you surprised that the White House codified these absurd claims into actual national-security directives?

What about the revenge prosecutions? Did you know that fourteen authors of books critical of Trump have now faced investigations or threats of prosecution, including James Comey, John Bolton, John Brennan, Jim Clapper, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Alex Vindman, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Mark Esper, Chris Christie, Andrew Weissmann, Norm Eisen, and Miles Taylor? Or is this all just a complete coincidence?

Unfortunately, we’re still in the early innings. The revenge campaign is going to keep growing. Years from now, Truth Social posts like the one threatening Seth Meyers will look like dusty piñatas. But the good news is we have a lot of time to do something about it. I’m spending most of my week preparing for our next phase of DEFIANCE.org. I’m not really interested in just documenting the abuses anymore; we need to be constantly organizing to stop them. And we’re going to support some incredible organizations doing just that.

I’ll close this morning by reminding you that the First Amendment doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. It belongs to the rest of us. And what’s “PROBABLY ILLEGAL” is not our criticisms of him. It’s his own attacks on free speech.

Your friend, in defiance,

P.S. WHAT’S HAPPENING ON TREASON

Here’s what’s coming up.

1. TODAY / Mon, Nov 3 @ 3pm ET - CORRUPTION - Rep. Dan Goldman calls out Donald Trump - I will chat LIVE with New York Congressman Dan Goldman about the wild blitz of corruption taking place inside the administration — from Donald Trump’s effort to secure $230 million for himself from the Justice Department to his efforts to silence critics. You can join here.

2. TOMORROW / Tues, Nov 4 @ 3pm ET - ELECTION DAY with Paul Begala - Former senior advisor to President Clinton and long-time Democratic strategist Paul Begala will join me for a discussion of the Election Day races in New Jersey, Virginia, and beyond — as well as what’s to come ahead of the 2026 midterms. You can join us here.

3. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT / The Weekend Show - I joined MSNBC this weekend with the great

   Norman Eisen
   . Here’s a clip of us talking about DEFIANCE.org as well as the latest corruption from the Trump administration.