Every week on The Rushfield Lunch, I chat with some of the era’s greatest thinkers, gadflies and artists in an effort to answer the critical question: “What the hell is wrong with everybody?”
But this week, after Disney yanked Jimmy Kimmel from his late-night perch following pressure by Trump FCC chair Brendan Carr, I couldn’t have picked a better guest: Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark, whose latest piece is appropriately titled, “First, They Came for Jimmy Kimmel.”
There haven’t been a lot of heroes that have come out of this era. But what Jonathan and his site have done by being absolutely consistent in their opposition to what’s happening here has been my survival guide.
“This is what Hungary looked like a decade and a half ago,” Jonathan says about the current moment, where Trump critics are being silenced and companies like Disney and Paramount have capitulated to the president’s frivolous lawsuits. “It just is fascism. But, again, nobody should be surprised. One of the things people actually talked about in January of this year was, ‘Well, we’ll see how our late-night comedians handle America’s turn into authoritarianism.’” (At the moment, two of the four — Kimmel and Stephen Colbert — have all but lost their jobs.)
In my column this week, I once again sound the alarm and all but beg Hollywood to stand up in opposition to what’s happening. Protests broke out on Thursday at Disney. It’s a start.
But Jonathan says, “I don’t know that there is anything affirmative that any of us can do to stop this train. Because the root of the problem is that the American people are rotten. The American people wanted this. They voted for it. Donald Trump did not flag the football. He did not pretend that he was going to do something different. He talked about all of this shit constantly.”
Still, he adds, there are some levers to pull when that train is running off the tracks at breakneck speed.
“History suggests that these things are only ever really stopped by just bodies. Masses of bodies,” Jonathan says of what people can do in response to these chilling nine months since Trump retook office. “Do not surrender in advance. And don’t surrender when they come to push you. Make them fight for every inch of ground.”
Please watch our entire insightful and cathartic conversation above — and share our chat with anyone who needs to hear what’s coming if we don’t try to stop it — and join me next week, on Wednesday at 11 a.m. PT for another thrilling guest.
