Let’s be clear about what simply occurred: Jimmy Kimmel, a distinguished 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 folks it doesn’t like. It is a favored weapon of contemporary autocrats; its deployment towards Kimmel is a qualitative escalation even above the administration’s earlier acts of censorship (like focusing on the creator of a pro-Palestine op-ed for deportation).
What simply occurred, in brief, reveals how far down the authoritarian highway the US 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 aside from one in every of them, and doing all the pieces they’ll to attain political factors from it.”
On the time, the proof advised the shooter very seemingly was not a MAGA believer (and proof launched the following day confirmed that he nearly 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 expect serves the wants of our native communities,” he mentioned.
Carr’s menace ought to have been toothless. The FCC is prohibited by regulation from using “the facility of censorship” or interfering “with the precise of free speech.” There’s a very slender and barely used exception for “information distortion,” wherein a broadcast information outlet knowingly airs false reviews. What Kimmel did — an offhand remark based mostly on weak proof — is extraordinarily totally different from making a information report with the intent to deceive.
However months earlier than the taking pictures, 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 severely — regardless that 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 — instantly determined that Kimmel’s feedback from two nights in the past had been unacceptable. Nexstar, it ought to be famous, is presently making an attempt to buy one in every of its main rivals for $6.2 billion — a merger that would require specific FCC approval.
“Mr. Kimmel’s feedback concerning the demise 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 present 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 undergo an unlimited scores 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 distinguished 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 of nicely inside bounds, look like a pretext — benefiting from the pervasive local weather of concern and censorship within the wake of Kirk’s demise to punish a distinguished title on the president’s enemies record.
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 impartial shops to promote to government-aligned conglomerates who remodeled their editorial stance.
It could take fairly a bit extra work for Trump to consolidate Orbán-levels of management over the media. However what’s so putting concerning the Kimmel case is how swiftly Nexstar (and ABC) rolled over. They didn’t even attempt to put up a combat to defend their very own capability to regulate what goes on their airwaves. They as a substitute apparently determined that combating the federal government is expensive and dangerous, placing licenses or perhaps a worthwhile merger in danger, and that risking that isn’t value it for Jimmy Kimmel.
That is what it appears like when a society’s elite rolls over within the face of authoritarianism. It by no means ends nicely.
