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Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) is happy that ABC decided to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show. But like Fox News political analyst Brit Hume, Cruz is not happy about the role that Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), played in that decision. By threatening TV stations that carried Jimmy Kimmel Live! with fines and license revocation, Cruz warned in his podcast on Friday, Carr set a dangerous precedent that could invite similar treatment of conservative speech under a future administration.
“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said,” Cruz declared, referring to the September 15 monologue in which the late-night comedian erroneously suggested that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a college in Utah five days earlier, was part of the MAGA movement. “I am thrilled that he was fired. But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”
In an interview with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday, Carr warned that there are “actions we can take on licensed broadcasters” that dared to air Kimmel’s show, including “fines or license revocations.” He added that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Either “these companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel,” he said, “or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Hours later, Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC affiliate stations, announced that it would preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! “for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show.” Sinclair, which owns 38 ABC affiliates, likewise said it would “indefinitely preempt” Jimmy Kimmel Live! beginning that night. ABC, which produces the programming aired by those affiliates and owns eight of the network’s stations, fell in line the same night, saying it would “indefinitely” suspend the show.
Cruz likened Carr to a mafioso. “He says, ‘We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,’” the senator noted. “And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar [and] going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
In fact, Carr’s threat was more explicit than that. “This sort of status quo is obviously not acceptable,” he declared, saying it was “past time” for “these licensed broadcasters” to say, “Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run, Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we licensed broadcaster[s] are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.”
That rationale for punishing stations that carried Kimmel’s show was absurd on its face. The policy to which Carr alluded applies to a “broadcast news report” that was “deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners” about “a significant event.” While Kimmel’s remarks were certainly misinformed, it is doubtful that he intended to “mislead viewers.” It seems more plausible that he committed to a partisan narrative without bothering to ask whether it was supported by the facts, an example of carelessness rather than deliberate deceit. But whatever you think of Kimmel’s intent, a comedian’s monologue is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “broadcast news report.”
By abusing his power to exert pressure on ABC and its affiliates, Cruz said, Carr was setting an example that Democrats are apt to copy. “Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat…wins the White House,” the senator said, and “they will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”
Although “it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel,” Cruz said, “when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it….It is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.’”
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) agreed that Carr’s involvement in kiboshing Kimmel was “absolutely inappropriate.” The FCC’s chairman “has got no business weighing in on this,” Paul said on Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press. “If you’re losing money, you can be fired. But the government’s got no business in it. And the FCC was wrong to weigh in. And I’ll fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.”
Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson perceives a similar danger in Attorney General Pam Bondi’s response to online commentary that celebrated Kirk’s murder or justified violence against conservatives more generally. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Bondi said last week, erroneously asserting a constitutional distinction between “free speech” and “hate speech.” She later claimed she had in mind “threats of violence that individuals incite against others.” But the speech that offended Bondi generally would not meet the First Amendment test that the Supreme Court established in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, which requires advocacy that is both “directed” at inciting “imminent lawless action” and “likely” to have that effect.
“This is the attorney general of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, telling you that there is this other category…called hate speech,” Carlson remarked on his show last Wednesday. “And of course, the implication is that’s a crime. There’s no sentence that Charlie Kirk would have objected to more than that.”
With good reason, Carlson said: “You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever. And there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think.”
It is encouraging that at least some of President Donald Trump’s allies recognize that freedom of speech is unreliable unless it protects their political opponents. But Trump himself seems oblivious to that point. When asked about Cruz’s criticism of Carr on Friday, Trump described the FCC chairman as “a great American patriot,” adding, “I disagree with Ted Cruz on that.”
Of course he does. For years, Trump has been eager to wield the FCC’s powers against broadcasters who air programming that offends him. During Trump’s first administration, he averred that “network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected that suggestion in no uncertain terms. “I believe in the First Amendment,” he said. “The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment, and under the law the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”
Trump’s views on the subject have not changed. Last week, he cheered Kimmel’s suspension as “Great News for America” and urged NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, two other late-night comedians who are often critical of him. “Do it NBC!!!” he demanded. In case there was any doubt that Trump was not merely offering advice as a businessman or TV critic, he signed that Truth Social missive “President DJT” and later clarified the underlying threat. “You have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump,” he complained to reporters. “It’s all they do….They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.” When network newscasts “take a great story” and “make it bad,” he averred, “that’s really illegal.”
The difference this time around is that the FCC’s Trump-appointed chairman, an avowed free speech champion, has no constitutional compunction about using his powers to bully broadcasters into submission. “They give me only bad publicity or press,” Trump said on Thursday. “I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr.”
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Jacob Sullum
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