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Kash's nomination to lead the FBI, said one watchdog, "represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else."
Watchdog critics are sounding the alarm over president-elect Donald Trump's choice of Kashyap "Kash" Patel to be the next director of the FBI, calling the MAGA ultra-loyalist—who even former Republican colleagues describe as "dangerous" and unqualified—to be running the nation's top law enforcement agency.
Patel, who served in the previous Trump administration as chief of staff in the Department of Defense and a counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was characterized by the Associated Press earlier this year as "trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand."
Journalist Medhi Hasan, co-founder of Zeteo, said that while previously working for MSNBC he had done a deep-dive on Patel, during which he discovered just what "a deeply strange and alarming and sycophantic figure" Trump's pick is.
"Yes, we're going to come after people in the media." —Kash Patel, 2023
As the New York Timesreports, Patel founded a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to individuals prosecuted for involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection and also runs a merchandise business which sells flashy pro-MAGA gear under the "K$H" label.
Patel, the Times notes, "sells pro-Trump T-shirts and other items as well as a series of his children's books that pay homage to 'King Donald.' Mr. Patel also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the 2024 Trump campaign and from Friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the former House Republican from Florida, who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general after criticism over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use."
According to the watchdog group Accountable.US, Patel is just the latest unqualified choice by a president-elect will to put "political loyalty above national security." As the group noted in a statement:
While Patel joined the previous Trump administration in its last year and quickly rose through the ranks thanks to his hard-nosed style and fawning devotion to Donald Trump, other Trump officials reportedly regarded Patel as "dangerous" including General Mark Milley who feared he would break the law for Trump, and former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr who said "Over my dead body" when Trump entertained naming Patel deputy director of the FBI. Recently, Patel has threatened to prosecute journalists and political opponents of Trump. Patel has also reportedly spread baseless Qanon conspiracy theories and "earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from his own business dealings with Trump-related entities."
Last year, during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, Patel vowed that Trump's enemies would be targeted if the former president returned to power. "We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media," Patel said at the time.
"Yes, we're going to come after people in the media," Patel explained to Bannon, talking about journalists and others who he claimed "help Joe Biden rig elections."
Tony Carrk, Accountable's executive director, warned Kash's nomination to lead the FBI "represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else."
"Even former Trump officials have questioned Patel's qualifications and ability to adhere to the rule of law after he has threatened to prosecute journalists and Trump's political opponents,” Carrk added. "Patel's financial entanglements with the president-elect also present potential conflicts of interest. He has turned his gushing idolization of Trump into a money-making opportunity, enriching himself by promoting the Trump brand alongside his own. It says it all about Donald Trump's priorities to once again reward a devout political crony even if it means America's national security interests come a distant second."
"Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion."
Writing Saturday in The Atlantic, staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro described Kash as "exactly the kind of person who would serve in a second Trump administration," based on his personality as much as his record.
Why was he seen as "dangerous," even among Trump administration insiders at the time?
"It wasn't a question of ideology," according to Calabro. "He wasn't a zealot like Stephen Miller, trying to make the bureaucracy yield to his agenda. Rather, Patel appeared singularly focused on pleasing Trump. Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion."
Once again, the far-right Republican president will have all the levers of the state on his side as he continues his crusade against journalism that dares hold him to account.
“Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time:
In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”
Knowing this about Trump, Democrats and liberals worry that he will use the Department of Justice, especially if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general, as an unrestrained vehicle to pursue the prosecution of political enemies.
But given Trump’s constant attacks on media—“the opposition party,” as his ally Steve Bannon called the fourth estate (New York Times, 1/26/17)—journalists fear that he will use the power of the state to intimidate if not destroy the press.
Trump called for defunding NPR (Newsweek, 4/10/24) after a long-time editor accused the radio outlet of liberal bias in the conservative journal Free Press (4/9/24). Rep. Claudia Tenney (R–NY) introduced legislation to defund NPR because “taxpayers should not be forced to fund NPR, which has become a partisan propaganda machine” (Office of Claudia Tenney, 4/19/24). With Republicans also holding both houses of congress, bills like Tenney’s become more viable. Trump has previously supported budget proposals that eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Politico, 3/27/19).
The infamous Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda many see as a blueprint for the second Trump term, calls for the end to public broadcasting, because it is viewed as liberal propaganda:
Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding. That is significant not just because it means that for half a century, Republican presidents have failed to accomplish what they set out to do, but also because Nixon was the first president in office when National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which the CPB funds, went on air.
In other words, all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake. As a 35-year-old lawyer in the Nixon White House, one Antonin Scalia warned that conservatives were being “confronted with a long-range problem of significant social consequences—that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC.”
All of which means that the next conservative president must finally get this done, and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become “a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,” but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.
PBS and NPR, as FAIR (10/24/24) has noted, has for decades caved in to right-wing pressures—PBS by adding conservative programming, NPR by trying to rid itself of political commentary altogether. But the right will never let go of its ideological opposition to media outlets not directly owned by the corporate class.
Trump also has a well known track record of revoking the credentials of journalists who produce reporting he doesn’t like (Washington Post, 2/24/17, 5/8/19; New Republic, 11/5/24). It is realistic to assume that a lot more reporters will be barred from White House events in the years ahead.
While a bill that would grant the secretary of the treasury broad authority to revoke nonprofit status to any organization the office deems as a “terrorist” organization has so far failed (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24), it is quite possible that it could come up for a vote again. If this bill were to become law, the Treasury Department could use this ax against a great many progressive nonprofit outlets, like Democracy Now! and the American Prospect, as well as investigative outlets like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The department could even target the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has already said in response to Trump’s victory, “The fundamental right to a free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, must not be impaired” (11/6/24).
Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24), an avid media observer, said there is no reason to think Trump will soften his campaign against the free press. She said:
In 2022, he sued the Pulitzer Prize board after they defended their awards to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both newspapers had won Pulitzer Prizes for investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.
More recently, Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the way the anchor characterized the verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct case against him. Each of those cases is wending its way through the courts.
She added:
There is nothing to suggest that Trump would soften his approach in a second term. If anything, we can expect even more aggression.
Consider what one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, Kash Patel, has said.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel threatened during a podcast with Steve Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Trump has already gone after the New York Times and Penguin Random House since Sullivan wrote this. CJR (11/14/24) said:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
And just before his victory, Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris “misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him” (CBS News, 10/31/24).
Expect more of this, except this time, Trump will have all the levers of the state on his side. And whatever moves the next Trump administration makes to attack the press will surely have a chilling effect, which will only empower his anti-democratic political agenda.
Google is the sole winner of this deal, and this should be an example of what not to do to redress power and financial imbalances between news media and large digital platforms.
A California-Google deal that would provide $250 million for local journalism and an “AI accelerator” program was announced by California Gov. Gavin Newsom as a “major breakthrough” to ensure the “survival” of newsrooms across the state. In exchange, the state has agreed to kill the California Journalism Protection Act, a bill that would have forced the tech giant to share revenues with news publishers and which was deemed to be more transparent than similar legislation in Australia and Canada.
News publishers and other advocates focusing on the good side of the deal (more money) have also been cautious about celebrating it. Journalists’ unions and associations have been more straightforward in decrying it. Altogether, newsrooms are feeling the toll of elongating their “survival” mode, especially if the trade-off is to continue handing their future to those who helped create their crisis.
By eliminating legislation enforcing revenue-share agreements, California has reduced Google’s financial liability compared with Australia and Canada, where news outlets, including broadcasters, are compensated for creating value for Google. In addition, Google got the state of California to pick up an important portion of the $250 million bill using public funding. More significantly, the deal allowed the corporation to avert disclosing how much value news generates for Google’s search engine, which estimates put at $21 billion a year in the U.S. based on searches using news media content.
Concentrated market power is hurting the chances for a free and financially independent press to thrive.
Let’s be clear: Google is the sole winner of this deal, and this should be an example of what not to do to redress power and financial imbalances between news media and large digital platforms. If anything, it should be a wake-up call to the harmful effects of digital monopolies on the news media industry. Governments can no longer spare Google and other tech giants from their role in the financial crisis of journalism.
The recent ruling from a federal district court confirming Google’s monopoly over search tells part of this story. Although that case didn’t address the corporation’s impact on newsrooms, we learned that Google’s grip on advertising demand couldn’t have been achieved without a key illegal practice: its multibillion-dollar contracts with phone makers that were designed to squash rival search engines. Today, search advertising continues to be the largest channel capturing ad spend in the U.S.
Most importantly, this stranglehold enabled Google to constrain media’s bargaining power and prevent any meaningful discussion about the dollar value news content provided to its search engine—as the looming threat of permanently turning off news access would have hurt the press even more. Without significant challengers to Google’s search engine, newsrooms are beholden to Google’s whims for news discoverability and distribution on search results.
A separate trial starting next week tackling Google’s monopoly over advertising technologies (ad-tech) is likely to complete the story of this corporation’s role in this crisis. The ad-tech industry, once thought to help news publishers make revenue from digital, has become extraordinarily complex, opaque, and concentrated. At the same time, it is the backbone that connects advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads across the web—providing an alternative to search and social media ads, all of which drives a marketplace worth around $300 billion in the United States alone.
Besides controlling search ad revenues, Google also controls the ad-tech platforms upon which most ad sales by news publishers are made. Without getting too technical, in practice this means Google has eyes on the value of news publishers’ ad inventory, on advertisers’ preferences and perceptions about those publishers, and on the algorithms that connect the two to determine ad prices.
Also unchallenged, Google controls between 50% and 90% of transactions in each layer of this market, where it takes a cut of about 35% of each ad dollar spent. In the trial, the Department of Justice is expected to cut through the ad-tech complexity and show how Google has also manipulated ad prices to divert ad dollars away from news publishers into the tech giant’s own pockets. For the first time in many years, in this case the DOJ is seeking a breakup to redress Google’s harms.
As a counterargument, Google has been trying to push a story in which a “very competitive” market already exists, since multiple giants in various other sectors—Amazon, Walmart, CVS, etc.—are also competing for ad dollars. This view invites us to presume news publishers and journalists must be doing something wrong, so what else is there to do but to help them to “survive” in this brave, new world?
But nothing could be further from the truth. Newsrooms across the world have not stopped innovating, changing their revenue models, and adapting to audiences’ new habits. Journalists continue to defend their trade and the rights that ensure they can do their jobs safely. People still want to find reliable news. But when it comes to competition, how do we even call it that when a handful of players control not only where news is discovered and accessed, but also drive appetite to monetize audiences’ personal data, and ultimately assign value to a publisher’s ad inventory?
The fight for legislation in California that would redress these imbalances was the first step—not the ultimate fix—to coming out of the “survival” mentality that has been entrenched for far too long in journalism. Concentrated market power is hurting the chances for a free and financially independent press to thrive. As long as short-term fixes like the California-Google deal, obscure this reality, we will continue to allow the very same people we should be holding accountable to shape the future of democracy.