What did Donald Trump do today?

He called attention to a Democratic Senate hopeful he was trying not to call attention to.

James Talarico is a Texas state representative locked in a close contest for the Democratic Senate primary this year. While Texas is overall a red state, both he and his opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, have a fighting chance to win a U.S. Senate seat in the midterm elections as Trump's deep unpopularity drags his party down with him. That's especially true in Texas, where Trump has alienated both old and new members of his voting coalition with the careless cruelty of his immigration crackdowns.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico and US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

While their politics are similar, Crockett is a Black woman who has repeatedly clashed with Trump, and Talarico is a soft-spoken white man. Perhaps under the impression that Texans as a whole share his feelings about Black women who talk back to him, Trump believes Talarico poses a bigger threat in the general election.

That is likely why, just after midnight this morning on the east coast, Stephen Colbert announced to viewers of The Late Show that he would not be doing a scheduled interview with Talarico during the telecast. The reason: CBS was under legal threat from the Trump administration if he did so. Colbert reported that CBS lawyers were concerned by comments that Trump's FCC chair Brendan Carr had made, suggesting that it would be a violation of the Equal Time rule governing broadcast television to give Talarico a chance to make his case to the voters.

There are two problems with that claim. The first is that talk shows and news shows are exempt from that policy. The second is that Talarico's competitor in the upcoming primary election, Rep. Crockett, has already appeared on the same program this cycle.

CBS's parent company Skydance, owned by the billionaire Larry Ellison, needed Trump's approval for a merger last year, and Ellison has made no secret of his willingness to pay Trump's price for continued legal protection. He appointed Bari Weiss, a conservative Trump-approved candidate, as head of CBS News, and she promptly began spiking news stories that she felt were damaging to the Trump administration. CBS also terminated Colbert's contract last year, which delighted Trump, who is obsessed with TV coverage of himself.

In this case, though, the plan backfired, and in a fairly predictable way. Colbert—who has nothing to lose now that his run on the show will end in May—disregarded orders from CBS not to explain why Talarico's interview had been spiked. He told the broadcast audience that his interview with Talarico would appear on the show's YouTube channel instead. It has since racked up almost 4,000,000 views in the first 24 hours after it was posted. (A typical video from The Late Show might get a few hundred thousand views in the same period.)

 

It is important to note that Crockett did not object to Talarico's appearance, and condemned CBS for spiking the interview. In her own interview with MSNOW, she noted wryly that the overall effect was probably to give Talarico a boost, given the extraordinary attention Trump's efforts to silence him had gotten.

Texas' Senate primary election is Tuesday, March 3. 
 

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who believe in free and fair elections don't try to censor opponents. 

• Presidents who are either popular or smart don't try to even if they want to.