Trump’s FCC Threats Pushed ABC To Pull Jimmy Kimmel Off The Air. Free Speech Is Under Attack.
Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC affiliates with fines & license revocation to pressure Disney/ABC into taking Kimmel off the air. This is an inexcusable infringement on free speech.
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It turns out all the Trump Administration had to do was make free speech expensive, and far too many corporations have capitulated with an embarrassing level of cowardice.
On Wednesday evening, Disney’s ABC took Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off the air “indefinitely” after threats from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr sparked ABC affiliates to push for Kimmel’s show to be pulled. The move came after Jimmy Kimmel made this statement about Charlie Kirk’s assassination during a monologue on Monday:
“The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
Hardly seems like a statement worthy of an immediate suspension of Kimmel’s show, but the Trump Administration didn’t like those comments.
There’s been an effort on the right to act as if this was an organic move on ABC’s part. It wasn’t. This was the direct result of the Trump Administration unleashing threats of government retaliation if Disney/ABC didn’t make a change.
In a podcast appearance with Benny Johnson on Wednesday afternoon, Brendan Carr made a direct threat to the licenses of ABC affiliates and called on them to pressure Disney/ABC:
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead… There are calls for Kimmel to be fired… You could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this…
"Frankly, I think it’s really past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney, and say, ‘Listen, we are going to pre-empt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out. Because we, licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC…’
Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up…”
That’s exactly what the ABC affiliates did.
From CNN’s report on Kimmel’s show being pulled:
Nexstar, which operates about two dozen ABC affiliates, issued a press release saying it “strongly objects” to Kimmel’s remarks and saying its stations would “replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”
Notably, Nexstar is seeking Trump administration approval to acquire another big US station group, Tegna. The deal requires the FCC to loosen the government’s limits on broadcast station ownership.
Minutes after Nexstar criticized Kimmel publicly, ABC said the show was being yanked nationwide.
Sinclair, too, has business pending before the Trump administration, and it made a bid for Tegna a day before Nexstar stepped in with its bid. The company announced Wednesday night that it will air a one-hour special tribute to Kirk on Friday night in Kimmel’s usual time slot.
There you have it in black and white. Brendan Carr threatened ABC affiliates with potential fines and license revocation and called on them to refuse to run Kimmel in order to pressure Disney/ABC. Nexstar and Sinclair, owners of ABC affiliates with business in front of the FCC, did what was demanded of them. Disney/ABC then made the call to indefinitely take Kimmel off the air nationwide.
President Trump sent a post on Truth Social celebrating Kimmel’s firing, and Brendan Carr posted a tweet praising Nexstar for their role in pressuring ABC. After the backlash, Disney and ABC began leaking to reporters that Jimmy Kimmel could come back on the air. We’ll see how this plays out.
After the firing, Fox News Host Sean Hannity claimed this is not conservative censorship, and said, “I can't find a single prominent conservative voice in the country that even remotely wanted or hoped or was pushing to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air.”
That’s simply not true. Aside from Brendan Carr himself pushing for it earlier that day, Donald Trump has been pushing for Kimmel to be ousted for some time. In July, Donald Trump posted, “The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes… It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!”
Trump hoped he played a major part in it.
This is an unmistakable use of state power to pressure private companies to do the bidding of the Trump Administration and stifle dissent. This isn’t anything like the “cancel culture” the right was previously angry about, which involved no government pressure, but was simply the result of public pressure on private companies. The alleged free speech absolutists are now engaged in one of the most overt crackdowns on free speech in recent memory.
It’s been clear for quite some time now that the Trump Administration would more forcefully target free speech through the FCC. President Trump has, for years, called for broadcast licenses of networks that post critical, accurate news coverage of him to lose their licenses. Of course, cable networks do not require broadcast licenses, but their local affiliates do. After President-elect Trump announced he would install a loyalist like Brendan Carr at the FCC, that threat to those licenses became more real.
In November 2024, I sent a post calling out the fact that Brendan Carr wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the FCC. It went viral. Carr replied to my post at 2:20 am, saying, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” The next morning, because I wasn’t awake at 2 am, fighting with people on the internet, I replied with a question:
“While I have you here, will you definitively rule out targeting the broadcast licenses of news networks Trump disagrees with? He’s called on the licenses of multiple networks to be revoked. You claim to be a free speech champion, so this answer should be a no-brainer.”
Well, now we have our answer. Carr would, in fact, threaten the broadcast licenses of networks Trump disagrees with, and it resulted in a prominent Trump critic, Jimmy Kimmel, being taken off the air.
Here’s my exchange with Carr so you can see it for yourself:
This is just the latest infringement on free speech in the Trump Administration’s attempt to force corporations to bend to President Trump’s whim. There’s clearly a pattern. Corporations with business before the administration will either settle lawsuits with the administration they would otherwise win, or they will make other decisions to appease Trump’s demands.
No shortsighted corporate merger approval is worth the damage this does to our democracy. Business “leaders” need to wake up.
This also can’t be viewed in a vacuum. It’s happening amid a widening crackdown on dissent. The Trump Administration has been exploiting Charlie Kirk’s murder to provide a pretext to target liberal groups who had absolutely nothing to do with the killing.
One thing is clear: While major corporations capitulate, independent media is becoming increasingly important. When you see someone speaking out and doing work you like, make sure you support it. They’re on the front lines pushing truth at a time when free speech just got significantly more expensive.
