Transcript of Disney Sues Trump’s FCC & Fake Polling Exposed | 8.19.26

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Disney goes to war with Trump's FCC over ABC, The View, and Jimmy Kimmel.

The FCC walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation. I don't think we're better off as a country for it.

I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, August 19th. This is Morning Wire.

Florida voters choose their nominees for governor as Ron DeSantis terms out, while Californians choose their replacement for disgraced Congressman Eric Swalwell.

And a stunning announcement by a supposed polling firm sends shockwaves through the industry and has a Democratic mayor calling for prosecutions.

This is less of an indictment on the polling industry, as I think it's an indictment on media and lazy media and media that that wants to put out polls that fit their narrative.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned, we have the news you need to know.

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Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with the details. So Megan, there's been a lot of back and forth between ABC and the Trump administration over the last few years. The last time we reported on this, ABC and Disney were the ones getting sued, so now we're seeing the reverse. What triggered this lawsuit?

Yeah, Georgia, so this is all about license renewals this time, and this is a really big deal when it comes to potentially setting some precedent. So Disney and ABC say that the FCC violated their First Amendment rights by requiring 8 of their broadcast affiliates to seek early renewals on those licenses. Now ordinarily they wouldn't have expired until 2028, and we are talking about some of ABC's biggest outlets here on the local level— Chicago, Houston, New York, Los Angeles— and ABC ABC says that those early renewals are part of a quote-unquote retaliatory campaign because the president doesn't like what ABC broadcasts. Now, some context here, Georgia, is that back in 2024— and you alluded to this— Trump successfully sued ABC after anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly claimed that a jury found the president, quote, liable for rape. That was not true, and ABC agreed to a $15 million settlement and an on-air apology. But that war between Trump and ABC just continued even after that, as in April, their late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked about First Lady Melania Trump becoming a widow. And he made that joke only 2 days before a third assassination attempt on the president.

And here's that clip for those who might have missed that controversy.

Our First Lady Melania is here.

Look at—

well, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.

So really, this is all just the latest clash in what has been an escalating feud between the Trump administration and ABC.

So what evidence is ABC citing in their claim that this early renewal order is political retaliation?

You know, mostly they're pointing at the timing of the statements from FCC officials, as well as some of the president's own public statements. They say that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered the accelerated review only one day after President Trump again demanded that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel over that widow crack. And they're also citing some social media posts where Trump said that some of these broadcasters should lose their licenses. And then they're also pointing to Carr's interview with podcaster Benny Johnson last September, where he also seemed to, let's say, lean on ABC a little bit, suggesting that they should either discipline or even potentially fire Kimmel.

But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, uh, on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

So ABC says that this early renewal requirement places their entire network under threat because the FCC could at least theoretically deny the applications, and they could drag the company through years of really expensive proceedings.

And how's the FCC responding?

So they say that the agency only ordered this review due to concerns that ABC's diversity and hiring practices violated federal anti-discrimination law. They say that it has nothing to do with the president's personal feelings toward ABC. In fact, this is what an FCC spokesperson said, quoting here: All broadcasters have a legal obligation to operate in the public interest, even Disney. The FCC has been examining claims that Disney engaged in illegal DEI discrimination for over a year, and they're also accusing Disney of a quote-unquote campaign of disinformation. But I do think it's worth noting that Commissioner Carr has repeatedly said that the FCC failed in the past to ensure that those broadcasters that use public airwaves are operating in the public interest. And he said on Fox last September that his office was going to work to rectify that.

Broadcasters are different than any other form of communication, including here. We're on cable right now. Fox News doesn't have an FCC license. CNN doesn't. But what ABC, CBS, NBC, those broadcast stations do. And with that license comes a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. And over the years, the FCC walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation. I don't think we're better off as a country for it.

So ABC is asking the D.C. District Court to immediately block those early renewal demands. And it's worth noting that this court is considered more liberal. It has issued injunctions against a number of Trump policies. So there's a good chance that ABC could get what they're asking for here, at least in the short term. And that's probably pretty important to them because, as they have said, this is an existential threat to them and it would be incredibly financially costly if they were to actually lose those licenses.

Well, and no doubt the other big networks are watching this closely. Megan, thanks for reporting.

My pleasure.

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The 2026 primary season is nearly in the books, and all eyes were on Florida last night in one of the last major primaries ahead of the midterms. While one contest in California has garnered attention for who is not in the race.

Here to discuss is Cabot Phillips, host of Wired In, who just can't get enough of these primaries.

You know me well.

Great to have you back on. So we had some interesting things happen in Florida partly just because of what happened over the course of the year in Florida. And then we have a case that we want to talk about in California. First, Florida, a major election to replace Ron DeSantis after 8 years in office. How did things turn out?

Yeah, Ron DeSantis is term limited. He could have won if he ran again, almost certainly. But in this case, whoever won this Republican primary is going to be a heavy favorite heading into November. And every poll coming in pointed to Congressman Byron Donalds running away with the election. The RCP average had him up 34 points on the 10-candidate field. And the results landed about where everyone expected. The polls were accurate. Donalds had every advantage in this race, and he cruised to victory last night. He had President Trump's endorsement, more than $100 million raised between his campaign and supporting committees and PACs, and also a splintered field. At some points, it did look like some candidates might break through, but prediction markets and polls had it as a two-way race between Donalds and James Fishback, a 31-year-old, um, sort of Tucker Carlson, kind of Nick Fuentes-aligned candidate on the fringes of the Republican Party. He had generated a lot of headlines, a lot of momentum online, though. And we know what happens online can also be limited to what is online and not actually play out in real life. Fishback also had been dogged over sexual misconduct allegations, financial disputes, residency requirements, and he faced a lot of backlash from GOP leaders in the state for calling Byron Donalds, a Black man, a, quote, "DEI hire." a quote, slave.

He called Byron, Byron, playing into some of the racial stereotypes there. So that angered a lot of Republicans in Florida, and ultimately he was beaten handily. Donalds now is the first Black Republican nominee for governor in Florida's history and also is a heavy favorite come November in a state where the GOP now holds a roughly 1.5 million voter registration edge.

Now, this is Florida's first election under its new congressional map. How did that factor in?

Yeah, it was a huge factor. So back in the spring, as you mentioned, Florida became the 8th state to complete mid-decade redistricting. Governor Ron DeSantis approved a map reworking 21 of the state's 28 districts, uh, designed to flip up to 4 Democratic-held House seats to the GOP come November. The courts ultimately shot down challenges to the new map, and now the new lines make 24 of the state's 28 districts, uh, GOP favorable. So it is a lot better environment now for the GOP. And you could see the fallout last night. Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz abandoned her redrawn district to run in a neighboring one in a very messy primary, while a centrist congressman had to fend off a socialist challenger in a district that just got even redder. Out West, there were not too many surprises. Most of the favorites cruised through their primaries, including in Alaska, where incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan cruised to victory. Worth pointing out, in that race, Democrats actually recruited another man on the ballot whose name was also Dan Sullivan. They were trying to, obviously, sow confusion on the GOP. Sullivan will now face off against Mary Peltier, Tola, a former member of Congress who, as we talked about on the show earlier this week, is running in the more moderate lane.

Right.

Which makes sense for Alaska. Now, Eric Swalwell really dominated headlines this week heading into the big primary in California, not because he's in it, because he's not actually in the race. We heard some more information about him. Tell us what's going on there.

Yes, Swalwell is off the ballot. That vacancy was filled last night in the Bay Area. But believe it or not, That's actually not the big story here. Uh, one day before his voters replaced him, the White House declassified FBI files on Swalwell's relationship with a known Chinese spy, uh, by the name of Fang Fang. The files confirmed a lot of what Swalwell had been denying for the last 6 years. He told agents back in 2015 that the two had, quote, physical relations on a number of occasions. And some of the details are wild in this story. In one encounter, Fang Fang showed up to Swalwell's apartment banging on the door after Swalwell had taken an Ambien, something he told the FBI he quote, barely remembers. As Fang kept trying to contact Swalwell, the FBI also seemed pretty impressed with her work ethic and tried to recruit her as a source. They were trying to recruit a Chinese spy as a source. This Chinese spy, we now know, was in a personal relationship with a member of Congress. Um, they wanted to use the codename Rusty Thumbs. Uh, now to be fair to Swalwell, the Bureau found no direct evidence of a quid pro quo, did not end up charging him in this entire scheme.

And back when he was pursuing a run for governor before his resignation, his lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to the FBI demanding that these files stay sealed. They are now unsealed, and we're seeing why he wanted so badly for them to not become public. And as of last night, his seat is officially someone else's.

And meanwhile, this comes out after he dropped out of another race, the race for governor, with other sexual misconduct allegations. So a lot on his plate. Kavith, thanks so much for reporting. Absolutely. In a story that's created a stir in the polling industry, supposed polling firm Median Strategies announced this week that it's closed its doors and that its polls released were totally fake. These polls showed major leads for LA Mayor Karen Bass and leftist Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong.

The company posted a message on its website saying that it has concluded its polling project and will not publish additional polls. In its statement, the company went on to say that the fake polling group was, quote, created as a short-term a long-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.

That's a mouthful. Joining us now is Dustin Olson, a pollster and managing director of American Pulse Research and Polling. Dustin, great to have you on.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

So first, big question, have you ever heard of anything like this? How unusual is this?

This is extremely unusual, and I don't know if I quite buy this whole idea that it was a social experiment, but, uh, I mean, it's happened in the history of, well, of media, I would say, not in polling, where people put out numbers that are fake. They never bothered to poll anybody. That has happened over the decades. But it is not a common thing. What's more common is what we see often in the media is what I would call public manipulation polls, where people might cook their books a little bit, cook their numbers a little bit in one direction to try to get a media narrative. We do see that kind of stuff happening. But just made up out of whole cloth, that's very unusual.

Do we have any sense of who was behind this or who maybe stood to benefit from whatever social experiment this was? Or like, what was— what was behind this whole idea?

Well, that's a great question. I mean, there's a lot of speculation that people could have.

I—

it's clearly not an actual pollster. This is somebody who either was doing what they say they were doing, trying to trying to do a social experiment. I do think there's some ethical issues with doing that and social experiments, but it also could be very well that this is a group that was intending to impact prediction markets. That is a new wrinkle that we have in American elections. You know, Great Britain has had betting in their elections for quite some time. There's actually a recent former member of parliament who lost his election when Starmer came in. He was a— he actually is a bookie, and he bet against himself, and he, uh, and he actually made money on his loss. But this is something that's new to American politics, doing the prediction markets. If somebody had a big position in one of these, uh, prediction markets, it's possible that's what they're doing. However, this fake pollster was doing what we call the herd effect, where they releasing surveys that looked like everybody else's surveys. So I don't know that that necessarily would have helped them. But, you know, you look at this Wisconsin governor's race, which is one of the surveys that they did.

I think in some ways you put this ounce of poison into the well and it poisons all of the polls that were done in that race, all of which showed that Francesca Hwang was leading by a pretty good margin. And we ended up with a very, very narrow victory victory for Crowley, mostly out of Milwaukee. Now, there's a lot that was going on in that race. Crowley wasn't even a candidate for most of the absentee voting. He was— his campaign was suspended, and he got in. He had every single national Democrat pull out all the stops to try to change the race at the end. How much of that had an impact? I mean, you know, a poll is ultimately a snapshot in time, and most of Those polls were done a couple of weeks before the actual election. So a lot can change quickly, especially if there's lots of undecideds in the race. Primary elections in particular can turn on a dime pretty quickly.

Right. The primaries are really hard to poll traditionally just because it's about turnout. Karen Bass is calling for investigations, possible prosecutions. What are the legal implications with this?

That's a great question. I'm not a lawyer, but I do know that this is— this is— they defrauded people. I'm sure they had an impact on the public. You know, this is— this is a form of manipulation of the public, and it will have an impact on races. I'm not being a lawyer, but I think you could say that possibly an SEC issue with Securities and Exchanges because the markets, prediction markets, are all their markets. So they're— if that was what the motivation was and they're trying to manipulate a market, I'm sure there's something that could be done there. So there's a lot of different ways that this could have an impact. Obviously, they had an impact on elections as well.

Well, a fascinating and rather troubling story here. Dustin, thank you so much for lending us your expertise.

Absolutely appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

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