Let’s be clear about what simply occurred: Jimmy Kimmel, a outstanding late-night comic, was simply taken off the airwaves as a result of the Trump administration didn’t like what he needed to say — and threatened his employer till they shut him up.
The Trump administration, it seems, has realized to successfully weaponize the regulatory powers of the federal authorities to punish speech it doesn’t like from individuals it doesn’t like. This can be a favored weapon of recent autocrats; its deployment towards Kimmel is a qualitative escalation even above the administration’s earlier acts of censorship (like focusing on the writer of a pro-Palestine op-ed for deportation).
What simply occurred, in brief, reveals how far down the authoritarian street the USA has traveled in simply eight months.
Jimmy Kimmel and the abuse of state powers
Kimmel’s downfall started with some admittedly ill-advised hypothesis in Monday’s monologue: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately attempting to characterize this child who murdered Charlie Kirk as something apart from considered one of them, and doing every thing they will to attain political factors from it.”
On the time, the proof urged the shooter very seemingly was not a MAGA believer (and proof launched the subsequent day confirmed that he virtually actually was on the political left).
However Kimmel’s apart — in a monologue principally centered on mocking President Donald Trump — didn’t justify what got here subsequent. Throughout a Wednesday podcast look, FCC head Brendan Carr threatened to revoke the broadcasting licenses of any stations that continued to air Kimmel’s content material.
“It’s time for them to step and say this rubbish…isn’t one thing that we predict serves the wants of our native communities,” he mentioned.
Carr’s menace ought to have been toothless. The FCC is prohibited by legislation from using “the ability of censorship” or interfering “with the fitting of free speech.” There’s a very slender and barely used exception for “information distortion,” by which a broadcast information outlet knowingly airs false studies. What Kimmel did — an offhand remark primarily based on weak proof — is extraordinarily totally different from making a information report with the intent to deceive.
However months earlier than the capturing, Carr had begun investigating complaints underneath this exception towards ABC and CBS stations, particularly allegations of anti-conservative bias. Stations needed to take Carr’s menace significantly — although Carr himself had declared (in a 2024 tweet) that “the First Modification prohibits authorities officers from coercing personal events into suppressing protected speech.”
Hours after Carr’s Wednesday menace, Nexstar — the biggest proprietor of native stations in America — immediately determined that Kimmel’s feedback from two nights in the past had been unacceptable. Nexstar, it ought to be famous, is presently trying to buy considered one of its main rivals for $6.2 billion — a merger that would require categorical FCC approval.
“Mr. Kimmel’s feedback in regards to the loss of life of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a vital time in our nationwide political discourse,” Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, mentioned in an announcement. “Persevering with to offer Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform within the communities we serve is just not within the public curiosity on the present time.”
With out entry to Nexstar’s roughly 200 stations — protecting about 39 % of the nationwide market, the maximally allowed cap — Kimmel would endure an unlimited rankings blow. And so, shortly after Nexstar’s announcement, ABC/Disney introduced that he’d be suspended indefinitely.
Trump has had it in for Jimmy Kimmel, a outstanding critic, for a really very long time. After CBS axed fellow late-night Trump critic Stephen Colbert earlier this yr, the president repeatedly mentioned that Kimmel was “subsequent.” Kimmel’s Kirk feedback, which each an FCC commissioner and (reportedly) ABC executives thought-about properly inside bounds, appear to be a pretext — profiting from the pervasive local weather of concern and censorship within the wake of Kirk’s loss of life to punish a outstanding title on the president’s enemies listing.
The weaponization of seemingly impartial “good authorities” guidelines, like broadcast regulation, to punish the enemies of the present president is a well-recognized flip within the story of democratic backsliding. It was one of many principal instruments utilized by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to batter his nation’s press into submission, in the end forcing unbiased shops to promote to government-aligned conglomerates who remodeled their editorial stance.
It will take fairly a bit extra work for Trump to consolidate Orbán-levels of management over the media. However what’s so hanging in regards to the Kimmel case is how swiftly Nexstar (and ABC) rolled over. They didn’t even attempt to put up a struggle to defend their very own capability to regulate what goes on their airwaves. They as an alternative apparently determined that preventing the federal government is dear and dangerous, placing licenses or perhaps a helpful merger in danger, and that risking that isn’t value it for Jimmy Kimmel.
That is what it seems to be like when a society’s elite rolls over within the face of authoritarianism. It by no means ends properly.
