Forbes Editor Who Threatened Firms Hiring Trump ‘Fabulists’ Fired After Secret $6M Paymenthttps://hotair.com/headlines/2026/08/17/forbes-editor-who-threatened-firms-hiring-trump-fabulists-fired-after-secret-6m-payment-n3818042The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane was fired after “the company discovered that he had received a payment of about $6 million from the founder of a firm that does business with the magazine.”
The payment was made after RJ Shook, the founder of the firm that worked with Forbes to publish wealth adviser rankings, “sold a majority stake in Shook Research to PPC Enterprises, ... .” Lane made himself a spectacle of anti-Trump furor in 2021 when he threatened companies that dared to hire people who formerly worked with President Donald Trump, such as former White House press secretaries Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, and Kayleigh McEnany.
Reading his virtue-signaling now about “truth reckoning” in light of his own duplicitous violation of journalistic ethics is poetic justice. ... Lane promised his outlet will “scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet” any company that hires one of the forbidden Trumpsters in his arbitrary blacklist: ...
The original source for what I double-quoted is Mediaite. Looking at the people Lane threatened mentioned by Mediaite, via W'pedia:
* Sean Spicer has been (and is), for several years, a contributor for cable network NewsNation, and cohosts "The Morning Meeting" daily podcast along with Mark Halperin and Dan Turrentine.
* Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was elected Governor of the State of Arkansas in 2022, an office she currently holds. Huckabee-Sanders is running for reelection; Governors of Arkansas are limited to two terms.
* Kayleigh McEnany has worked in various roles with Fox News. She also, after working with the Trump Administration, to her and her husband's first son and second daughter.
Whether Lane's threat was never intended to be more than empty virtue-signaling or a failed real threat, these three of his targets seem to have done rather well, post-Trump.
