Afraid of the Light

 Reportedly, Bari Weiss—she of the supposed "Free Press"—has used her newfound powers as head of CBS news to spike a story set to air on 60 Minutes about the torture prison in El Salvador, CECOT, to which Trump sent 250 innocent people without charge or trial earlier this year. She claimed the story needed further reporting. The journalists who worked on the segment (which had already cleared internal review) think there's another explanation. 

Indeed, it's not hard to imagine what might be in Weiss's mind here. She was brought on board specifically in order to reshape the ideological tenor of CBS News to make it more acceptable to Trump (her hiring came on the heels of a major settlement deal, after all, in which the CBS parent company Paramount agreed to pay Trump a massive cash settlement—and also conspicuously moved to take the Trump critic Colbert off the air shortly thereafter). 

Largely, Weiss has done what she was hired to do. Last week, as the nation reeled from a series of shootings and tragedies, CBS News was busy loyally broadcasting a "town hall" segment with right-wing trad wife influencer Erika Kirk. 

But recently, Trump has grown displeased with his own bought propagandists. Bari Weiss, who was supposed to be the one who would compromise CBS News's independence in Trump's favor, nevertheless interviewed Marjorie Taylor Greene—now one of Trump's most hated enemies. 

This came at a bad time for Weiss's paymasters at Paramount. They are currently trying to close a deal to buy Warner Bros. To do it—they will need Trump's complicity. He has already indicated that he might be willing to weaponize his regulatory agencies to tip the scales in Paramount's favor and beat out their rival Netflix. But Paramount knows they need to keep the king extra happy if they are going to convince him to intercede to their benefit. 

A 60 Minutes segment, revealing in ghastly reality the scope of Trump's crimes, would therefore come at a bad moment for Weiss's bosses. And so—with suspicious timing—she spikes the story. 

So much for the "Free Press"...

The world, after all, was never supposed to know what happened to those 150 people who were loaded onto planes, in violation of federal court orders, and disappeared in the middle of the night to a torture facility in El Salvador—where the world watched them marched off the planes, forcibly bent double, shaved and humiliated for the delectation of Trump's goons, who openly celebrated the brutality on social media. 

These people were supposed to just be labeled as "terrorists," without any charge or chance to contest the claim, and spirited away to a concentration camp to rot for the rest of their lives. 

They certainly weren't supposed to ever be able to tell their story on 60 Minutes. The American people weren't supposed to ever find out that these were just innocent men kidnapped off the streets—men with asylum applications; men delivering pizzas to American homes in order to survive; men who had fled a dictatorship in Venezuela that our own government claims to oppose—who were abducted and brutalized at Trump's behest in a foreign dungeon. 

And so, they spike the story. 

Trump plainly doesn't want the American people to see the reality of what he's been up to. As Victor Hugo once wrote, of the dictatorship of Louis Napoleon: "This government feels that it is hideous. It wants no portrait; above all it wants no mirror. Like the osprey it takes refuge in darkness, and it would die if once seen. [...] He who is afraid of the light is doing evil."

The future Emperor Napoleon III of France, in Hugo's telling (in his pamphlet Napoleon the Little) knew that the origins of his government lay in a violent massacre and usurpation. And so, he throttled the freedom of the press, in the hope that people would simply never know about these things, when it came time to ratify his coup d'état in a post hoc "plebiscite" that Louis Napoleon staged at the point of a bayonet. 

"Men have been sequestered, tortured, expelled, exiled, deported, and I have had hardly a glimpse of the outrage!" as Hugo puts it—such was the hope of Louis Napoleon; and such is plainly Trump's hope too. 

The last thing he wants is a mirror, which would show to the American people the full extent of his moral rot. And Bari Weiss—she who claimed to embody the freedom of the press—has apparently been more than happy to oblige.