Kimmel's suspension is another red line as Trump extorts big business to silence critics

Don't believe the fake outrage about his statements on Kirk. The goal was to silence a Trump critic, letting corporations know they'll face consequences if they don't, and will be rewarded if they do.

The “indefinite suspension” of Jimmy Kimmel’s show by ABC is the starkest, most clear example of Donald Trump’s authoritarian attempts to snuff out the First Amendment, using the power of government to censor critics.

This, as global corporations that own media companies are all too willing to placate the administration because they have business before it.

Let’s be clear about what happened here, as we already see MAGA conservatives—some of whom encouragingly pushed back on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s vow to prosecute hate speech earlier in the week—backing this action completely.

Brendan Carr, Trump’s hand-picked FCC chair, went on a MAGA podcast and threatened action if ABC didn’t do something about Kimmel, pointing to this statement from the comedian in his monologue 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.

It was the “one of their own” line Carr is claiming he was outraged about as the right continues to blame the left for the killing. But that’s completely fake. There’s not much about the statement that is over the line, and it was based on media reporting of that day.

Putting aside the shooter’s motive, which law enforcement hasn’t yet told us but which we’re piecing together from the shooter’s reported relationship with a roommate, if you watch the fuller one-minute clip of the monologue, which I urge you to do here, you will understand what really enraged Trump.

Kimmel mocked Trump mercilessly (and hilariously) as someone who couldn’t care less about Kirk—more focused on building his ballroom—and as using Kirk’s death for his own political agenda.

We certainly can’t trust the reasons we’re being given by Trump’s hand-picked FCC chair regarding what they supposedly found objectionable. And we know after CBS, which had a merger it needed approved by the FCC, fired Stephen Colbert, Trump said Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and others were next.

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Again, what Kimmel said about “one of their own” was on Monday night, when we were all going by what we knew. His is not a news program—he’s a comedian, an artist expressing views—and shouldn’t be held to media standards. But even many news programs were in the same place then. Kimmel was given no chance to clarify or update his statements. This proves the rationale is bogus.

The true goal here was to silence Kimmel, a long-time critic of Trump, and all of it was pre-planned. Trump simply doesn’t want anyone criticizing him. Even one of the other FCC commissioners, Anna M. Gomez, posted a thread on X condemning the actions of Carr and the Trump administration.

What happened after Carr spoke on the podcast were rapidly cascading events. Nexstar, which owns the largest number of ABC stations (32 out of 200), within hours put out a statement saying they’d be pulling the show, almost as if they had the statement ready:

Nexstar’s owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future, beginning with tonight’s show. Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.

In August, Nexstar announced a controversial plan, buying up rival Tegna, which would create a massive company with 265 stations in 44 states and Washington DC, per Deadllne. That would represent a whopping 80% of U.S. TV households—a near monopoly.

It’s a more than $6 billion deal that would not only need approval by the FCC; the FCC would have to lift the cap it currently has, which doesn’t allow any company to own stations that would reach more than 39% of households.

Carr, back in May, said the FCC would be looking at lifting the cap—he called it an “arcane” rule—and he said it again just two weeks ago.

Of course, the Trump administration would love having one company owning stations reaching more than 80% of households as it can pressure just one entity into submission. And Nexstar would love to own that many stations so it can make billions of dollars.

So it doesn’t seem surprising that Nexstar pushed out a statement that seemed like it was already written, saying it would drop Kimmel. Then, following Nexstar, Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns many ABC stations and is already in Trump’s pocket, known for its massive right-wing disinformation campaigns on its TV news, announced it also would suspend Kimmel’s program.

But Sinclair went even further:

“Regardless of ABC’s plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform,” the company said. The company also said that a tribute to Kirk will air on ABC stations in Kimmel’s time slot on Friday.

And in August, Sinclair’s CEO Chris Ripley met with the FCC’s Carr for the specific purpose of pushing for deregulation and “eliminating ownership caps.”

ABC, owned by Disney which has a lot of business before the government, and which had already bowed to the Trump administration earlier in the year, settling the frivolous lawsuit Trump filed by paying out millions for Trump’s library, apparently saw its hands tied and followed suit. Rolling Stone reports that “multiple executives” at both Disney and ABC didn’t think what Kimmel said about Kirk went too far, “but the threat of retaliation loomed."

So, all of this is about big business bowing to Trump, and Trump wanting to strip the First Amendment.

Earlier in the week, some Republicans—including Ted Cruz—pushed back hard on Pam Bondi’s vow to prosecute hate speech in the wake of Kirk’s killing. Right-wing pundits from Britt Hume to Megyn Kelly slammed Bondi too, saying, as Kelly said on her show, “We don’t ban hate speech.” (Of course, many of them, including Kirk when he was alive, actually have promoted hate speech, so they don’t want to see the government banning it.)

But regarding the Kimmel actions, they’re splitting hairs, with those like Kelly supporting it. The argument seems to be that this is a private company—ABC—not the government that is involved in censorship. If that were actually true, I would agree (though I’d staunchly say ABC overreached). We’ve many times demanded corporations distance themselves from hateful actions and activities and not promote ugly rhetoric from the right, and that includes media companies.

But even Hume admitted the dubiousness of the “private company,” argument in this case, posting that, “The First Amendment does not protect performers like Jimmy Kimmel from being cancelled by their private sector employers. But I would have liked the outcome a lot better if the chair of the FCC had not involved himself in it.”

That’s ludicrously weak. Carr wasn’t “involved” in this. He ordered it, doing the bidding of a president who is intent on silencing his critics, and letting big business know that they won’t get what they want—and will face retaliation—unless they follow his orders. That is the epitome of authoritarianism, and this is yet another bright line crossed.