At the end of October, during an edition of GB News’ new programme The Late Show, host Bev Turner interviewed Gloria Allred, an attorney who represents women who allege they were trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. The topic under discussion was the man who can no longer be called Prince Andrew, but Allred appeared eager to broaden the conversation.
“Was there anyone else who was involved, anyone who was rich and powerful and famous, who at this point has not come forward, and who has exploited these children?” she wondered aloud. “I don’t like to call them paedophiles; I like to call them child molesters because that focuses on the child who was the victim.”
At this, Turner said, simply, “Yeah, very good point, a lot of the language is so important around this topic.” In other words, Allred had gone off the range and the host was shutting down not only this avenue of debate, but also herself.The light in her eyes went black.
But if Turner would have sooner screamed “fuck” on air than ask Allred if she might just be referring to Epstein’s one-time close friend Donald Trump, another of her guests, British hard right ghoul-for-hire Nile Gardiner was awake to the danger of implication. Somehow managing not to die of embarrassment, in the name of taking one for the team, he proved himself entirely willing to talk rubbish of a stripe that made Comical Ali look like Walter Cronkite.
“On the issue of Donald Trump, there’s no evidence in any way connecting him to any wrongdoing with regard to Epstein,” Gardiner declared. “I don’t think it’s an issue at all for the MAGA base. I think it’s a bigger issue for figures like Bill Clinton, for example… I don’t think there’s any evidence whatsoever linking Donald Trump to this scandal.”
Within the mad confines of The Late Show this kind of nonsense is what passes for fair and balanced output. With a fervour that seems demented even by the standards of GB News, on this beat, propaganda and lies are the norm.
Seven nights a week, midnight until 2am, the talk is of the “hard left socialist” Labour government, the “invasion” of Britain by immigrants, and “the Democrat shutdown” that has led to the mothballing of much of the American federal state.
Inevitably, the rabid rhetoric comes at the expense of anything that locks eyes with reality. Last week, despite the fact that Turner now broadcasts from Washington DC and The Late Show has ambitions to cover US politics just as well as it does with the British variety, there was no mention of severe delays at airports in Dallas and Orlando due to a shortage of air-traffic controllers.
Items about the startling hike in health-insurance premiums and mortgage payments for the “ordinary Americans” about whom the guests profess to care were non-existent. Unsurprisingly, not a word was said about Trump confusing an IQ test with a test for dementia.
With its uneasy mix of British and American politics, instead, there were calls for ICE-style raids in Britain. We heard lavish praise for the antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.
Turner is like a ringmaster at a circus of fallen souls, a presenter whose grasp of current affairs often seems deficient to the point where you wouldn’t back her in a pop quiz against a chicken. Just last month, at the mere mention of the acceptance by Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, of $50,000 in cash in an FBI sting operation that very day, she replied, “I’m not familiar with that story”.
Since her days as a rather good presenter of ITV’s NBA show, back in the 90s, Turner’s journey has spanned galaxies. A fervent vaccine sceptic, she believes that Robert Kennedy Jr will help to make America a healthier country. No wonder they’ve sent her to Washington. The whole thing is nuts.
And so is me watching it – even when I’m not being paid to do so. I confess, ever since the channel coughed its way on to our screens like a pandemic that causes people to whine themselves to death, I’ve been addicted to GB News. Like a masochist who can’t stop probing a mouth ulcer with his tongue, when at home there are few days in the last four years when I haven’t tuned in for at least a quick revel in the shamelessness of it all.
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Which is why I think I can say that the appearance of a live programme in a timeslot previously reserved for repeats from earlier in the evening suggests that The Late Show has been designed to obviate the dirty little secret that GB News is growing stale. After all, there are only so many times one can watch twisted old stagers such as Kelvin MacKenzie and Carole Malone griping on about “woke” without reaching for the remote to see what’s happening in the World Series.
So here comes something flashy and new. Never mind that The Late Show is moaning at the seams with the channel’s usual sugary diet of junk-food talking points, in broadcasting from the American capital, at last, GB News has made it to The Show. It’s Big Time, baby. As one of its insufferable guests recently put it, they’re broadcasting “from the centre of the universe”.
To aid the never-ending war effort of dragging the Overton window to the edge of the spectrum, the programme’s producers have corralled every mad dog they can find to their harshly lit studio. Night after night, contributors of the calibre of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer face softball questions that don’t really make sense. “Is Donald Trump doing a great job here in America, compared to the UK?” Turner recently asked.
On nights when she isn’t in the chair, the show is hosted by Ben Leo, one of the channel’s innumerable identikit rubber-faced ingenues. In an ideal world, Leo would learn to ask questions that don’t exceed the length of the collected speeches of Fidel Castro.
He should also stop being in awe of some of the most ridiculous figures ever to disgrace the small screen. People such as Trump fixer Seb Gorka, who, when interviewed about extrajudicial killings off the Caribbean coast, told him, “interdiction hasn’t worked, now we’re gonna blow you up”.
Goodness only knows who’s watching this nonsense. The Late Show was launched with a lavish party in DC to which GB News big cheeses travelled by private jet (at a time when staffers in London who clock on at 3am were being told they could no longer take cabs to work), but after five weeks on the air, the ads in the breaks feature stairlifts and aids for people who have trouble getting in and out of the shower.
Far from a hot young demographic, substantial numbers of this target audience will surely be in bed when The Late Show begins. Some will be in their forever beds by the time it finishes.
Then again, as James Ball noted in his recent New World cover story about GB News owner Paul Marshall, traditional metrics such as viewing figures aren’t really the point. Rather, the point is the misinformation economy of which The Late Show is but one small part.
It’s about a baffling degree of access and influence. In an honour normally reserved for journalistic big hitters, Turner has already flown on Air Force One.
Of course, none of this helps the programme swing like its American equivalents. Stodgier than refrigerated porridge, it does nothing to stop it being cheap and naff.
In a baffling segment last week, the two presenters took their families to a building site on Pennsylvania Avenue. “You two are banned from the White House,” was the jovial shout to two young children seated in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, “you are fake news”.
We can only hope one day Turner and Leo will be told the same thing, for real.
Ian Winwood is a freelance journalist
