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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
How Brendan Carr, the attack-dog FCC chair, helped take down Jimmy
Kimmel with words, not actions
By Brian Stelter, CNN
Updated:
1:56 PM EDT, Thu September 18, 2025
Source: CNN
When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested
Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended and said, “We can do this the easy
way or the hard way,” ABC and its local affiliates were listening.
Within a matter of hours, ABC suspended Kimmel’s show
“indefinitely,” a stunning move that has raised serious First
Amendment concerns.
“Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas
they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke,” the
ACLU said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s actions,
paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First
Amendment freedoms.”
While many free speech groups are saying that Carr’s conduct ran
afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment, Carr did not violate the
letter of the law. That’s because the First Amendment bars government
action limiting free speech. And Carr didn’t take any action — he
merely, and perhaps ironically, spoke.
The takeaway: President Trump and his lieutenants have a clear grasp on
how to pressure companies to change their entertainment content and
news coverage without taking action that would provoke a legal battle.
Who is Brendan Carr?
Carr is a long-serving member of the FCC who has become an increasingly
visible attack dog for the Trump administration this year. He is an
attorney who joined the FCC as a staffer in 2012 and became a
commissioner, appointed by Trump, in 2017. Upon Trump’s reelection,
the president-elect chose him to chair the regulatory agency. Carr has
been a regular at Mar-a-Lago as well as Fox News, and earlier this year
he showed his loyalty to Trump by wearing a gold lapel pin of the
president’s face.
He rose to prominence in 2024 after he wrote the chapter on the FCC in
the conservative blueprint known as Project 2025. In it, he railed
against technology and media companies’ “censorship” of
right-wing content and values — and promotion of diversity, equity
and inclusion programs. He wrote that among the agency’s top
priorities should be “reining in Big Tech.”
He has promised to hold broadcast TV and radio stations accountable,
and just one hour after thanking the president for his appointment,
Carr wrote on X, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore
free speech rights for everyday Americans.”
Since Trump’s election, Carr has gone on the attack, threatening
broadcasters with enforcement actions and investigations for perceived
slights against Trump and the MAGA movement. He also has an active
presence on social media, and is unafraid to make his rooting interests
known: Carr initially reacted to the news of ABC’s Kimmel show
suspension with a celebratory dancing GIF from “The Office.” On
Thursday morning, he wrote on X that he was “glad to see that many
broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”
Taking on Kimmel
On Wednesday afternoon, Carr tapped into preexisting MAGA media anger
about a Monday night Kimmel monologue and used a right-wing
podcaster’s platform to blast Kimmel and pressure ABC’s parent
company Disney.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr
said.
He also pointed out that local station owners have a lot of power over
ABC, since those owners choose whether to carry ABC’s national
programming. “It’s time for them to step up,” Carr said.
Two big station group owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, came out publicly
and criticized Kimmel after Carr’s interview garnered attention on
social media sites. Both station groups told ABC they would preempt
Kimmel’s show, which likely led the network to pull the show
nationwide.
Crucially, both station groups also need the Trump administration’s
blessing as they remake their businesses in the streaming age.
Local stations broadcast over the public airwaves, so the FCC is tasked
with licensing TV and radio stations and ensuring that they’re
operating in the “public interest.”
While license renewals can be a time-consuming process for stations
every eight years, they’re typically not an uphill battle; the FCC
hasn’t denied any license renewal in decades. “Decades of
regulatory capture has made case law that strongly favors incumbent
licensees,” public interest lawyer Andrew Jay Schwartzman told CNN
last year.
But Trump repeatedly threatened TV license holders while campaigning
for reelection, and he has continued to do so from his Oval Office
desk. Carr has followed the president’s lead and opened multiple
investigations into media companies that Trump dislikes.
Weaponizing the FCC
Some of Carr’s predecessors, and the one remaining Democratic FCC
commissioner, Anna Gomez, have spoken out against what they view as the
weaponization of the FCC.
Pro-Trump influencers, meantime, have egged Carr on. Podcaster Benny
Johnson reshared his interview with Carr after ABC yanked “Jimmy
Kimmel Live,” and Johnson wrote, “This is what got Kimmel fired.
Right here.”
Johnson continued, “It’s called soft power. The Left uses it all
the time. Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield
power as well.”
In this case, the power was rhetorical.
“This is what’s known as jawboning — when state actors use
threats to inappropriately compel private action,” The Free Press
wrote in an editorial on Thursday.
“When a network drops high-profile talent hours after the FCC
chairman makes a barely veiled threat, then it’s no longer just a
business decision. It’s government coercion,” the editors wrote.
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