Jim Acosta Slams NBC After Comcast’s Donation to Trump Ballroom: ‘Latest Network to Compromise Itself’

Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta is worried about American media becoming state-dominated, especially now that media corporations are making payments to President Donald Trump’s administration. In his view, NBC “compromised itself” after parent company Comcast donated money to Trump’s White House ballroom project.

“All of our major TV networks right now, they’re compromised in some fashion as the U.S. evolves or mutates into having a state-dominated TV system,” Acosta said on The Jim Acosta Show, his podcast, on Friday October 31. “NBC is now the latest network to compromise itself. The parent company of NBC, Comcast, recently donated money to Trump’s ballroom.”

The White House recently released a list of 37 corporations that donated to the construction of Trump’s $300 million ballroom in the East Wing of the White House, and Comcast was the only listed corporation that owns and operates media companies, The Guardian reported.

On his show, Acosta seemingly alluded to ABC and CBS’ recent settlements with the Trump administration — ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library in December 2024 to settle a defamation lawsuit, while CBS parent company Paramount Global said it would pay $16 million to the same cause in July to settle a 60 Minutes lawsuit — and recent leadership change at CBS — in which controversial journalist Bari Weiss has become CBS News’ editor-in-chief.

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“Add that to the bribes that ABC and CBS paid to Trump earlier this year, not to mention CBS being taken over by right-wing zealots, and of course we all know what’s happening over at Fox, which is already state TV — you have a situation in this country that is starting to seem like state-dominated television in the United States — or, at least, state compromised television here in the United States,” Acosta said.

He went on: “Folks, media companies owned by giant corporations that are worried about getting their merger-and-acquisition deals approved by the Trump administration have lost their way. They have forgotten that they are using the public airwaves to sell their product. The airwaves belong to us, not to corporations, not to Donald Trump. And the way we have to fight back is that we hold the feet of these corporations to the fire, and we do that by supporting independent media.”

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow also decried Comcast’s donation to Trump’s ballroom project. “For every Avelo Airlines, for every Paul Weiss law firm, and all the other law firms that did corrupt deals with Trump, for every corporation — like our parent company for another hot minute, Comcast — that wants to pay for Trump to take a literal wrecking ball, excuse me, I mean, an excavator to the White House, those public-facing companies should know there’s a cost in terms of their reputation with the American people,” she said on air on Monday, per The Guardian. “There may be a cost to their bottom line when they do things against American values, against the public interest, because they want to please Trump or buy him off or profit somehow from his authoritarian overthrow of our democracy.”

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