Sad! Donald Trump’s FCC childishly targets Stephen Colbert over joke about Trump and Putin

| 8:27 pm EDT May 5, 2017
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Earlier this week, CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert made an on-air joke about Donald Trump and Russia which was crude enough that one word of it had to be bleeped out. Trump’s supporters instantly tried to get Colbert in public hope water for the joke, but failed. So now Trump’s FCC is trying to target Colbert over the joke instead, with its chair leaping straight into an unusually specific discussion of potential punishments against Colbert.

Colbert referred to Donald Trump’s mouth as being a “cock holster” for Russian president Vladimir Putin. It was an obvious reference to gay oral sex. Trump’s supporters tried to paint the joke as having been homophobic. But the LGBTQ community seemed to see the ploy for what it was, as Colbert is a supporter of LGBTQ rights, and Trump’s conservative base largely couldn’t care less about the gay rights it was suddenly trying to champion.

Colbert simply responded on-air by pointing out how brave he thinks LGBTQ people are for being themselves in the face of societal pushback. And that should have been it, right? Except someone like Donald Trump can’t let these things go. And so it’s not a total shock that the Chair of the FCC is now talking about violations and fines with regard to Colbert’s joke (source: Variety), even after the public controversy fizzled.

Although the FCC investigates all complaints that are filed, the chair’s decision to begin publicly discussing fines over the joke makes fairly clear that Colbert is being targeted by the chair. But based on precedent, it doesn’t appear the FCC has any legal standing. The episode was pre-taped, and CBS had already made the decision to bleep out to bleep out the word “cock” in accordance with network television standards and practices. TV performers and their networks are typically only fined if they say or do something live that’s disallowed, and the network fails to prevent it from being aired. And yet this is the Trump era we now live in. We’ll see how Colbert responds during his next episode. Help fund Palmer Report