Kimmel and Carr did us all a favor
Trump admin's 'mob tactics' exposed
I have to hand it to the Trump administration. It is a source of endless material. For a columnist, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. For the nation, however, it has become a curse — the political equivalent of a virulent affliction working day and night to wreck our national health.
The administration’s rush to suppress free speech marches on apace. In the wake of the assassination last week of conservative thought leader Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration and the Federal Communications Commission have moved to threaten the interests of the parent company of ABC, which produces the Jimmy Kimmel Live show that was recently “suspended indefinitely” by the network
Kimmel had the audacity to say something about Kirk’s fans that they and agents of the federal government didn’t like. They claim, falsely I would say, that Kimmel said MAGA was itself responsible for Kirk’s death — when in fact the jailed suspect is not MAGA.
If you look carefully at Kimmel’s words, that’s not what he said at all. Here’s what Kimmel said (and I have embedded the full video of his comments below in case you have not actually seen the clip:
We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, the White House flew the flag at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president was taking this.
As you can see, nowhere did Kimmel say that any of Trump followers were behind Kirk’s murder. He said (and I’ll paraphrase) that MAGA Land quickly tried to blame others for it. I can vouch for that. When the story broke, I spent a good deal of time on Twitter/X. MAGA types were furiously lurching from tweet to tweet immediately accusing others of responsibility. “They” was the operative pronoun used, even though there was only one shot fired and no evidence of a conspiracy at the time.
In retrospect, it appears MAGA was terrified that, as rumored online, the assassination might have been the result of a bitter internecine dispute between Kirk and the notorious racist and anti-Semite influencer Nick Fuentes, whose followers are known as Groypers. In other words, right-on-right crime. This erroneous theory was also spread by some progressive groups.
Turns out that the accused, Tyler Robinson, was the child of a Republican mother and father, both Mormons and regular churchgoers. According to his mother, Robinson had become increasingly left-leaning in his politics lately and his lover was formerly a man who was actively transitioning to female. In a word, he had become radicalized.
But Kimmel’s words were quickly twisted — or perhaps in some cases, genuinely misconstrued — as blaming MAGA for the assassination. There were calls for Disney (parent of ABC) to fire Kimmel. Rather than stand by their man, Disney suspended his show “indefinitely.”
Turns out Nexstar, one the largest owners of local ABC affiliates, has a proposed $6.2 billion merger to acquire a similar company. The merger needs approval from the FCC. After the Kimmel kerfuffle, Nexstar promptly announce its station would no longer carry Kimmel. It was an obvious attempt to curry favor with FCC chairman (and shameless Trump ally) Brendan Carr, who had already threatened to take action against Disney over Kimmel’s speech. The very right-wing Sinclair, the largest owner of ABC affiliates in the country, not only announced it would discontinue Kimmel’s show and demanded an apology from him, but urged the FCC to take further unspecified actions in the Kimmel matter.
Want to know more about Sinclair? See John Oliver’s hilarious take on the company. Note: HBO Max, where Oliver works, is a cable/streaming network — not over-the-air, and therefore not regulated by the FCC:
But it gets worse … much, much worse. Carr’s demand that Disney take action against Kimmel came with a grave caveat: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Those were words, thundered the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, “that could have been uttered by a New Jersey mob boss.”
“That’s right out of Goodfellas,” added the former Trump hater-turned-MAGA man, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The Trump administration had previously used the same tactics against CBS, which had a merger with Skydance pending FCC review and several months ago announced this would be the last season for Late Night, whose host Stephen Colbert regularly skewers the president.
Trump had previously sued CBS over a 60 Minutes interview last year with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that he said was selectively edited. The lawsuit was grossly frivolous (all 60 Minutes interviews are edited) but CBS did not want to take the chance on a negative merger ruling from the FCC, so the company settled the suit and wrote a check to Trump for $16 million. Yes, the president extorted $16 million from a private media company, and the $8 billion merger was approved and closed.
“We’re in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons, including the permission structure that President Trump’s election has provided,” Carr told CNBC. “And I would simply say, we’re not done yet with seeing the consequences of that shift.”
Chilling words but there’s more: asked if the FCC would target NBC late night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, Carr said on CNBC: “We’ll see how this plays out.” Hah. Now he suggests he is taking a passive role and letting fate have its way. Perhaps an overcorrection for the mob language?
As the WSJ reminds us, the Trump administration has also “squeezed liberal law firms” to do Trump-approved pro bono work, while investigating Biden-era prosecutors who brought cases against Trump, such as the stolen classified documents case. And let us not forget Trump’s war against higher education.
The legendary Michael Eisner, former longtime Disney CEO, weighed in:
Thankfully, there is at least a smidgeon of humor to be found amid the grift, corruption, grift and malicious actors. Remember when a baker in Colorado used his religious beliefs to justify refusing to bake a custom cake for a gay couple’s wedding in 2012? Conservatives rallied around the Masterpiece Cakeshop case as an important marker of religious freedom.
Now Trump attorney general Pam Bondi is threatening criminal charges against an Office Depot employee who refused to print flyers publicizing a vigil for Kirk in Michigan. The employee was fired for failing to serve the customer, but that didn’t stop Bondi from massaging MAGA’s political erogenous zones.
P.S. For more on the corruption and grift:
This should come as a surprise to no one. The US is at a dangerous crossroads.
Believe it or not, we have MAGA supporters here in western Canada, though they don't really call themselves that.
You are lucky to have the First Amendment to the US constitution. Canada does have free speech laws, but we have no such equivalent to the First Amendment here. We also have hate speech laws, which I have long opposed. As you have written in this space before, "You don't have the right not to be offended."