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 discovered 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 in opposition to 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, briefly, reveals how far down the authoritarian highway 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 making an attempt to characterize this child who murdered Charlie Kirk as something aside from one in every of them, and doing all the pieces they will to attain political factors from it.”
On the time, the proof urged the shooter very doubtless 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 targeted 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 stated.
Carr’s menace ought to have been toothless. The FCC is prohibited by regulation from using “the facility of censorship” or interfering “with the correct of free speech.” There’s a very slim and barely used exception for “information distortion,” through which a broadcast information outlet knowingly airs false stories. 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 below this exception in opposition to ABC and CBS stations, particularly allegations of anti-conservative bias. Stations needed to take Carr’s menace critically — though 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 most important proprietor of native stations in America — out of the blue determined that Kimmel’s feedback from two nights in the past have been unacceptable. Nexstar, it must be famous, is at the moment 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 important time in our nationwide political discourse,” Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, stated in a press release. “Persevering with to provide Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform within the communities we serve is solely not within the public curiosity on the present time.”
With out entry to Nexstar’s roughly 200 stations — masking about 39 p.c of the nationwide market, the maximally allowed cap — Kimmel would endure an infinite 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 stated that Kimmel was “subsequent.” Kimmel’s Kirk feedback, which each an FCC commissioner and (reportedly) ABC executives thought-about nicely inside bounds, look like a pretext — profiting from the pervasive local weather of concern and censorship within the wake of Kirk’s demise to punish a outstanding title on the president’s enemies checklist.
The weaponization of seemingly impartial “good authorities” guidelines, like broadcast regulation, to punish the enemies of the present president is a well-known 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 retailers 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 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 skill to regulate what goes on their airwaves. They as an alternative apparently determined that preventing 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.
