{"id":819943,"date":"2026-08-20T13:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/819943\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T13:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:58:10","slug":"rosie-odonnells-return-shows-abc-is-done-capitulating-to-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/819943\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosie O\u2019Donnell\u2019s return shows ABC is done capitulating to Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> thought that if he could scare television executives badly enough, eventually the jokes would stop. Probably more than any other president, he understands television\u2019s power because he was manufactured and insulated by it. So Trump thought that if Stephen Colbert could be pushed off his late-night perch at CBS and Jimmy Kimmel could be suspended by ABC, and Brendan Carr could dangle the Federal Communications Commission over ABC like a regulatory sword, the message would sink in across the television industry: Criticize the president at your own peril.<\/p>\n

For a while, Trump\u2019s gameplan seemed to be working. But it\u2019s now clear that ABC and Disney, the network\u2019s parent company, have decided they are done running<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That is what makes Rosie O\u2019Donnell\u2019s unlikely return to television so delicious. On the surface, it is just a bit of summer programming: Kimmel is taking a vacation, so O\u2019Donnell is filling in for him this week. But Kimmel tapped O\u2019Donnell for the gig deliberately, framing it as \u201ca special treat\u201d for Trump \u2014 a delicious nod to the president\u2019s notoriously thin-skinned, two-decade-long vendetta against her for mocking his business failures back when she co-hosted \u201cThe View,\u201d another ABC franchise. O\u2019Donnell has been one of Trump\u2019s most persistent celebrity antagonists since. And Trump has spent that same stretch periodically threatening to strip her of her American citizenship in Truth Social posts that read like ransom notes. (After he returned to the White House, she famously moved to Ireland.)<\/p>\n

Now O\u2019Donnell is back behind a network television desk and, by all appearances, is having a blast. There was a comforting nostalgia in watching her surrounded by tchotchkes, radiating the loose, warm confidence that made \u201cThe Rosie O\u2019Donnell Show\u201d such a phenomenon in the 1990s. She handed out copies of her longtime friend Madonna\u2019s new album<\/a> to the studio audience, told stories about ordinary life and looked completely at home.<\/p>\n

Love her or not, seeing O\u2019Donnell back in her element was a master class in unapologetic cultural resistance. She didn\u2019t waste any time getting down to business.<\/p>\n

Love her or not, seeing O\u2019Donnell back in her element was a master class in unapologetic cultural resistance. She didn\u2019t waste any time getting down to business. In Monday\u2019s opening monologue, she tipped her hat to Trump by dubbing him the \u201cMango Mussolini\u201d and offering a stark warning: \u201cIf you thought that the president hated \u2018Jimmy Kimmel Live!\u2019 when it was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, buckle up, people!\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, O\u2019Donnell twisted the knife even further by referencing Trump\u2019s humiliating, tightly guarded escape from Air Force One in a catering truck <\/a>during a recent Turkey trip \u2014 quipping that he was currently watching the show from inside a mobile food cart. After calling him \u201cPresident Oompa J. Loompa,\u201d she thanked Trump sarcastically for making her \u201cre-famous.\u201d She looked directly into the camera and said, \u201cHi! I know you\u2019re watching!\u201d Then she moved on. Nothing enrages Trump quite like being ignored.<\/p>\n

But while O\u2019Donnell\u2019s return provided the cultural fireworks, the real earthquake was happening inside a federal courtroom. On the very morning after her debut, ABC and Disney officially sued the FCC, marking a monumental escalation against an administration that has weaponized federal agencies to settle personal vendettas. The suit is one of the most muscular legal challenges<\/a> mounted by a major media corporation against this administration, and it arrives after nearly a year of Disney choosing concession.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit involves eight Disney-owned ABC stations whose license renewals were moved up years ahead of schedule. ABC claims that government pressure from the action has already affected programming decisions, including political coverage on \u201cThe View.\u201d The long-running daytime talk show has reportedly gone months without booking a single political candidate and has quietly declined to air clips it otherwise would have used, out of fear that footage could be weaponized against the network in the FCC\u2019s ongoing review. The lawsuit seeks emergency relief to stop the agency\u2019s early renewal proceeding and any resulting threat against ABC\u2019s station licenses.<\/p>\n

The company also concedes, remarkably, that it aired one of Trump\u2019s primetime speeches on its streaming platform \u2014 a speech that recycled thoroughly debunked claims about the 2020 election \u2014 specifically because it worried about the consequences of not airing it, something it says it normally would not have done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sit with that for a second. A multinational conglomerate, worth an estimated $106 billion, that owns Marvel, Pixar, ESPN and a chunk of the American entertainment imagination, admitted in a federal court under oath that it is self-censoring its own airwaves out of fear of a government agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The FCC, for its part, insists that its scrutiny concerns Disney\u2019s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices, not ABC\u2019s speech. Carr has called the lawsuit \u201cmeritless\u201d and said the commission is merely following facts and law. But this explanation has a glaring problem: The pattern is impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter<\/a>, Crash Course.<\/p>\n

Carr, a Trump appointee, has publicly echoed Trump\u2019s attacks on ABC. In September, he dangled a naked ultimatum: Either ABC \u201ctook action\u201d against Kimmel, or the network would face severe regulatory consequences. In April, Carr ordered an early review of the network\u2019s\u00a0 broadcast licenses just after Kimmel used the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner to needle the president<\/a>. The move followed months of Trump publicly demanding, on Truth Social and in impromptu Air Force One gaggles, that ABC\u2019s licenses be \u201ctaken away\u201d because the network\u2019s coverage of him is \u201calmost 100% Negative.\u201d Documents uncovered<\/a> by the Guardian this week laid bare the cozy coordination between Carr, his top staffers and Trump\u2019s inner circle \u2014 including nearly a dozen scheduled calls and White House meetings between senior officials and the supposedly \u201cindependent\u201d regulator.<\/p>\n

Disney, meanwhile, has not exactly distinguished itself as a fearless corporate warrior against Trump. The company previously chose accommodation over confrontation. In December 2024, ABC agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump\u2019s presidential library and museum to settle a defamation lawsuit over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos.<\/p>\n

Disney\u2019s newfound spine did not appear out of nowhere, and it\u2019s worth being honest about what actually moved it. The company\u2019s current CEO, Josh D\u2019Amaro, who took over from Bob Iger in March, has told<\/a> business reporters that the company intends to stand on \u201cjournalistic integrity\u201d and refuses to be told how to run its news operations \u2014 a fine sentiment, and one that would carry more weight if it had arrived before a federal regulator forced the company\u2019s hand rather than after.<\/p>\n

That is precisely why O\u2019Donnell\u2019s presence behind that desk this week functions as something closer to a renaissance than counterprogramming. O\u2019Donnell has explicitly framed her Kimmel hosting role as solidarity with the late-night community and a defense of First Amendment rights. She is, in her own telling<\/a>, guest-hosting partly to show support for Kimmel\u00a0 and partly out of grief for Stephen Colbert, whose \u201cLate Show\u201d was canceled by Paramount amid its own merger maneuvering \u2014\u00a0and who, in O\u2019Donnell\u2019s estimation, never got the public defense he deserved. In interviews, she has been unsparing about what she sees as coming next in American media consolidation, warning that a CNN controlled by David Ellison \u2014\u00a0who purchased Paramount and CBS \u2014\u00a0would be \u201ctragic.\u201d O\u2019Donnell has\u00a0 compared the current wave of right-wing ownership takeovers to a future in which Fox News wouldn\u2019t be one outlier conservative network among many, but the mainstay of the entire industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whatever you think of O\u2019Donnell \u2014 and conservative media<\/a> has spent<\/a> the week insisting<\/a> that her return to network television constitutes some sort of Trump Derangement Syndrome case study \u2014 she understood something Disney\u2019s legal department only recently caught up to: Capitulation doesn\u2019t buy safety. It buys an appetite for more capitulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Trump\u2019s media wars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump thought that if he could scare television executives badly enough, eventually the jokes would stop. Probably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-819943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}