The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said talk show host Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended by ABC for deliberately misleading the public about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
During his opening monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Monday night, the host suggested that Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, was a MAGA Republican.
“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,” Kimmel said, before going on to ridicule President Trump for not looking grief-stricken enough in public appearances.
All of the evidence that has emerged since the assassination points to Robinson being, as Utah Governor Spencer Cox put it, “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”
During an appearance on conservative podcaster Benny Johnson’s show Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Kimmel’s conduct was “really sick” and warned that the agency could make a “strong case” to hold Kimmel, ABC, and Disney accountable for distorting the news.
He noted that Rep. Swalwell (D-Calif.) had recently disseminated similar disinformation on X, by “emphasizing that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a straight, white male from a Republican family that voted for Donald Trump.”
“In some quarters, there’s a very concerted effort to try to lie to the American people about the nature” of the assassination, Carr noted, adding that Kimmel’s remarks appeared to be an attempt to “play into the narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican-motivated person.”
“If that’s what happened here with his conduct, that is really really sick,” he stated.
Carr explained that the FCC gives broadcasters a license to operate “and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
He explained that these licensed networks “can’t be running a narrow, partisan circus and still be meeting your public interest obligations,” or “engage in a pattern of news distortion.”
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct or take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead,” he warned.
The chairman told Johnson that there is “certainly” a path forward to suspend Kimmel over his “intentional” disinformation regarding the assassination, and that the FCC could offer its own remedies, as well. Carr said he couldn’t elaborate because the agency could ultimately be called upon to adjudicate the matter.
“Disney needs to see some changes here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this, you know, garbage to the extent that that’s what comes down the pipe in the future, isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities,” the chairman said. “But, but this sort of status quo is obviously not, not acceptable where we are.”
“You make a strong argument that this is sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact, a very important matter,” Carr stated.
The chairman said the issue was “very very serious” right now for Disney.