Ajit Pai Is No Jedi

The latest news for free-market Jedi Ajit Pai isn’t good.

The FCC chairman’s rationale for ending Net Neutrality in 2017 was that existing Title II rules had supposedly shackled the forces of the marketplace, “deter[ing] the massive infrastructure investment that we need.” If the rules were allowed to stand, he said, we’d “pay the price in terms of less innovation.”

In an ill-advised effort to make his point for the online masses, Pai starred in a video dressed as a Star Wars Jedi, brandishing a lightsaber against evil internet-user safeguards.

But his wizardry isn’t working, and none of his claims from 2017 have turned out to be true.

The Real Crisis Is Not at the Border. It’s How the Media Enables Trump’s Lies.

Two years before CBS booted him for sexual misconduct, then-Executive Chairman Les Moonves was asked about the circus surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," he said. “Who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? … The money's rolling in and this is fun," he said.

If that sounds familiar, you might also remember CNN President Jeff Zucker praising candidate Trump’s constant availability to the media as reason enough for the network to run wall-to-wall coverage of nearly every Trump rally in the weeks prior to the general election.

Their decisions to go all-in on Trump in 2016 may sound a distant echo today. But it’s one that is still being heard and felt in the wake of the networks’ decision to air Trump’s Tuesday-night speech about a border crisis that doesn’t exist and a wall that U.S. taxpayers don’t want to pay for.