Jimmy Kimmel suspended after pressure from FCC chair shows autocracy of Trump administration

I’ve gotten used to learning about outrageous goings-on in the Clown Show of the Trump administration.

But when I heard this afternoon that Jimmy Kimmel Live, his late night show on ABC, had been suspended indefinitely because of a comment he made about how conservatives are using Charlie Kirk’s killing to score political points, that struck me as beyond outrageous.

In a story about Kimmel’s suspension by ABC, the New York Times reported what he said.

The comments at the center of this week’s firestorm came during Mr. Kimmel’s opening monologue on Monday night. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang 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,” the host said.

Conservative activists castigated those comments, saying they mischaracterized the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter. Prosecutors said Mr. Robinson had written in private messages about Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” but the authorities have not identified which of Mr. Kirk’s views the suspect found hateful; his mother told prosecutors that her son had recently shifted toward the political left and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”

Kimmel’s remarks sound pretty damn right-on to me. Keep in mind that last weekend Trump, Vance, and other MAGA types were speculating about how Kirk was killed because of left wing radicals, even though there was no evidence then, nor any evidence now, of this.

It appears that Tyler Robinson, the accused killer of Kirk, acted alone for reasons that are still unclear. Robinson isn’t talking to authorities. But regardless of his motive in shooting Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel had a perfect right to share his view of what the “MAGA gang” was trying to do: score political points. Kimmel was absolutely correct about that.

Here’s the thing. If ABC had simply suspended Kimmel because their executives considered that he’d gone over the line in his comment about Kirk’s killing, that’d be bad, but not outrageous. Corporations have a right to discipline their employees. However, not long before Kimmel’s suspension, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, had made remarks on a podcast that were clearly aimed at coercing ABC into suspending or firing Kimmel.

The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.

The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure on a major broadcast network by the Trump administration.

…Mr. Carr, in an interview on a right-wing podcast on Wednesday, said that Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the F.C.C. was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.”

What Carr said is blatantly illegal. The FCC has no right to tell television networks or anyone else how they should choose to exercise their free speech right guaranteed by the constitution. Talk show hosts can say offensive and inaccurate stuff without worrying about threats by the FCC.

Well, until now. Because the Trump administration is trying to follow in the footsteps of authoritarian governments around the world by doing their best to stifle criticism and dissent. This is how democracies die: by an autocrat using the power of the state to prevent free expression while encouraging news and commentary filled with praise for Dear Leader.

Mr. Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the pressure on ABC from the Trump administration as “despicable, disgusting, and against democratic values,” and compared it to the playbook of autocratic Chinese and Russian leaders.

“Trump and his allies seem to want to shut down speech that they don’t like to hear,” Mr. Schumer said on CNN. “That is not what democracies do. That is what autocracies do. And it doesn’t matter whether you agree with Kimmel or not, he has the right to free speech.”