The CIA’s British counterpart, MI6, was found to have planted propaganda pieces in the media in the UK and other parts of the world claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to drum up support for the war in what was dubbed Operation Mass Appeal.101 Former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter said, “Mass Appeal served as a focal point for passing MI6 intelligence on Iraq to the media, both in the UK and around the world. The goal was to help shape public opinion about Iraq and the threat posed by WMDs.”102
The Sunday Times of London later published a story titled “How MI6 Sold the Iraq War,” and said, “The Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organized Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.”103
At the onset of the Iraq War in 2003, the Department of Defense paid Iraqi newspapers to publish stories supporting the U.S. invasion which were written by Americans but appeared as if they were from Iraqis.104 A year before the 9/11 attacks it was also discovered that soldiers from the U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations Group had been working undercover at CNN and NPR (National Public Radio).105 Once this was reported in the European press they were fired.106
Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC in February 2003, less than a month before the invasion of Iraq, which he was very much against. The network claimed they canceled his show because of low ratings, but it was actually the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time.107 A leaked internal memo said he was a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,”108 thus confirming he was fired for opposing the planned invasion of Iraq.
Years later he would reveal, “This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer.”109 [General Electric was the co-owner of MSNBC at the time, and GE has been a major manufacturer of military products].110
Several years after the invasion, public opinion on the War in Iraq dramatically changed as the reasons for getting involved in it kept falling apart, but people have short memories and as the years passed, after George W. Bush’s presidency ended and was replaced with Obama, the anger about the deceptions that lead to the war quietly faded. Well over four thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq alone, not to mention the countless who have been injured, with many missing limbs and permanently disabled, all with nobody in the government or the media held accountable for the lies which caused it all.
Propaganda isn’t just something that’s used by the news industry◦— it’s used in comedy as well. Less than two months into Donald Trump’s presidency, Jimmy Fallon was reportedly under pressure to make his show “more political” because “he’s too weak on Trump.”111 He also apologized for having Donald Trump on his show shortly before the election and regretted ‘humanizing’ him after viewers (and the media) were outraged that Fallon was “too nice” to him.112
Fallon, while making regular use of Trump as a punchline, tends to shy away from politics and focuses his humor on other things like skits and games with celebrities, but since network executives felt the anti-Trump theme is what viewers want, or perhaps, that’s what they themselves wanted in order to use the show as their own political weapon, Fallon was forced to turn up the heat on President Trump. Some even speculated that The Tonight Show was shut out of the Emmys in 2017 because Jimmy Fallon wasn’t attacking Trump enough.113
After NBC fired Jay Leno as The Tonight Show host and replaced him with Jimmy Fallon in 2014, rumors were rampant in the industry that Leno was forced out because he was going too hard on President Obama. He was number one in the ratings for 20 years and still number one when he was forced out, so many people wondered why NBC would get rid of him since he was still on top.114 Leno was the first late night comedian to take the gloves off and really start bashing President Obama. For years, most comedians treated him with kid gloves and very few of their jokes really took him to task, but after the “hope and change” wore off and was replaced by regret and despair for many Americans, Jay Leno started bashing Obama like nobody else in the business.115
Right after Leno’s final episode, Johnny Carson’s head writer Raymond Miller wrote an Op-Ed saying that most late night hosts protected Obama, and that Leno broke the mold by taking Obama to task, while “Leno’s competitors haven’t exactly hammered President Barack Obama, hardly a smidgen.”116 Sure, they joked about him, but it was all light-hearted humor, and nothing like the way comedians had treated previous presidents. A lot of people feel NBC got rid of Leno because he was helping turn too many people away from Barack Obama. It’s interesting that immediately after Jimmy Fallon replaced Jay Leno as The Tonight Show host, one of his first guests was Michelle Obama who came on to promote Obamacare.117
Unlike Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, who took over The Late Show from David Letterman in 2015, made Trump-bashing a staple of his show to the point where it is an obsession.118 President Trump is his number one enemy, and after the election he made no secret of the fact that he uses his show, not just to get laughs at Trump’s expense, but to paint him in as negative a light as possible.119 Many nights his entire monologue is about Donald Trump, and it serves as more of a nightly anti-Trump editorial than stand-up comedy. The liberal media regularly boasts of Colbert’s anti-Trump rants, writing stories about them in order to bring them to the attention of those who don’t watch his show.120
Colbert’s constant pushing of the liberal agenda resulted in The New York Post running a story with the headline, “Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ has become propaganda for Democrats.”121 And that’s not even a secret at this point. In fact, one of the emails Wikileaks released of Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta shows that a Clinton insider was able to get Colbert to do two different segments to promote the Clinton Foundation.122 The Hollywood Reporter conducted a survey and found that many conservatives quit watching his show because of the blatant liberal bias, and that he was most popular amongst Democrats and atheists.123
Jimmy Kimmel also uses his show as part of the anti-Trump entertainment complex, but not with the level of distain and hatred of Colbert. Kimmel also uses his show to regularly promote liberal political agendas. After his newborn son was found to have a heart defect and had emergency surgery, Kimmel gave a tearful monologue telling his viewers what happened, thanking the doctors and the nurses, but then turned his emotional story into an anti-Trump rant, blasting the President for his plan to fix Obamacare.124 The next day New York Magazine said Kimmel might have “struck the final blow against the GOP health-care plan.”125
Other late night hosts like Samantha Bee on TBS, Trevor Noah on Comedy Central, Seth Meyers on NBC, John Oliver on HBO, and Chelsea Handler on Netflix, all use their platforms to constantly push the liberal agenda and attack conservatives. There is really no debating that they’re doing this, and I only mention this to encourage you to not watch them or give them one more follower on social media. But if you still have any doubt that comedy can be a vehicle for political propaganda, just keep reading.