When Trump banned four major television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN) from White House access, they immediately banned him back, saying they wouldn’t cover anything where he is speaking, and we know how the president loves to speak … and loves to be seen and heard doing it. Then his favorite network, FOX, joined the other four, and also stopped covering Trump.
As a result, Trump’s big event with President Xi of China this week may not get much press coverage. He’ll host a major White House event that won’t be in the spotlight (if the press can actually find the fortitude to resist the audience such big events bring, which is doubtful). If they have the fortitude they are pretending to have, Trump won’t get to display how he is the only one at the dinner who gets two scoops of ice-cream because he’s the Prez while poor Xi gets only one.
Trump, however, was prepared for the blowback from networks. He already had his own alternative network launch ready to go. As a matter of fact, knowing how the president loves to profiteer off the presidency and loves to use the White House as the setting for his big extravaganzas, maybe the banning of major networks from the White House was a scheme intended to increase the size of his own network launch!
By throwing all the competition out, Trump could expect a spectacularly big launch that he could boast about endlessly—”most watched television channel in the nation.” If you want to watch the president up close and personal or hear his press conferences, you’ll now have to tune in to Trump TV. Just like you have to tune in to Truth Social to be first to get his written announcements and pay a bundle for special status if you want to get those announcements as the first in line on Truth Social.
The Trump TV launch turned out to be the biggest Trumpflop of all time—a total faceplant in the mud. At its peak, the new all-Trump-all-the-time network, premiered to an audience of 8,000 prime-time viewers! By 9:00ET, the disappointed president was down to 3,000. By the next day, his astoundingly bored audience had dwindled to a mere 1,000 viewers willing to watch any longer. That compares to the typical millions of viewers any one of the major networks usually has during any hourly prime-time slot.
In point of fact, Trump’s largest audience on Trump TV matched the midrange of my most popular articles, and the low came in below the lowest of any article I’ve published on The Daily Doom. That is not a boast! That is perspective to gauge what a flop Trump was. He could not even match up to tiny, little-ol’ me when he has the White House for his production studio, a full production crew, a world-famous name and commands national and international interest for his announcements just because you never know when they might destroy the world!
Trump TV must certainly have been the biggest fail in television history! I would question that any small-town local TV stations ever premiered meaningfully worse back in the early 50s when people in most areas were just buying their first black-and-white tube televisions. (At least, not after people had time to run downtown and buy a TV and hoist the aerial onto the rooftop and get the picture to stop scrolling in order to find out what their first local television station was all about.)
My first thought when the major networks boycotted Trump in retaliation was, Ahh, peace at last! I won’t have to listen to the most arrogant mouth in human history trumpet away about how great Trump is. In fact, the one presidential event that somehow got some coverage after the ban was broadcast without any sound because there were apparently no networks on scene capable of setting up sound, so the president could not be heard while talking. That was refreshing. Let’s hope this calm after the storm lasts until Election Day. It was Trump’s own doing! And the chaos level fell by an order of magnitude.
Liar, liar fuel on fire
As diesel rises to a new record high over $6.50 as a national average, we have finally reached that point of seeing spotty fuel shortages that I warned would come with the first major stage of price troubles to where …
a few station owners are saying they are out of diesel, though this appears to be an isolated problem for the moment. However, if the diesel and gasoline supply situation does not change, more and more stations may find themselves without one or both of these two crucial motor fuels….
With the disruption to the oil markets, we are about to see that not only do local costs differ when it comes to energy, but also local availability. In this piece, the author makes the case that “the market has crossed from a pricing problem, which money solves, to a deliverability problem, which money alone does not….”
We are entering the next phase of the energy crisis initiated by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Petroleum product inventories have fallen close to the minimum operating requirements. That means daily consumption will have to come into balance with daily production. Somebody (probably a lot of somebodies) is going to be using less petroleum or going without it altogether for some uses.
Several airlines have announced they are cutting back flights due to fuel prices.
And it is only getting worse for Trump (and the rest of us) … quickly:
