When broadcasters first committed to kicking Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the airwaves over his egregious lies about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, leftists everywhere threw public tantrums accusing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr of authoritarianism. In reality, the true government threat of bullying to broadcasters comes not from the FCC, but from Democrats who have threatened to take action against the media companies refusing to reinstate Kimmel’s timeslot.
Private TV station owners are, of course, not obligated under federal law to publicize certain content — especially if that content is, at best, a tone-deaf rejection of calls to turn down the temperature, and at worst and most likely, deliberate dishonesty designed to foment more division.
Yet Democrats, spineless Republicans, and celebrities rushed to defend Kimmel against what they claimed was an “attack on free speech.” “Jawboning,” a word used to denote using authority to pressure for a certain outcome, dominated corporate media headlines.
As if pretending the Trump administration forced broadcasters into “censoring” the late night host wasn’t enough, Politico even encouraged Kimmel that he had “precedent on his side” if he wanted to go before the Supreme Court. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board additionally declared the Kimmel controversy was an example of “cancel culture and regulatory abuse.”
When Sinclair and Nexstar confirmed this week that, despite Disney’s decision to back Kimmel, they would not air the show on their combined 66 ABC affiliate stations, however, the tune changed.
Suddenly, the same crowd that shunned Carr for noticing Kimmel blatantly violated broadcasting rules and the same people who performatively announced the cancellation of their Disney Plus subscriptions were interested in using any power they could to punish the media companies resisting their pressure campaign.
Democrat Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Ed Markey, and Chris Van Hollen, specifically, vowed to put the screws to the broadcasters they claimed are “not only complicit in an alarming trampling of free speech rights but also risk running afoul of federal law.” In a letter to the Nexstar Media Group chairman, the blue party senators not only accused the media company of “eroding First Amendment freedoms,” but also of creating “the appearance of a possible quid-pro-quo arrangement that could implicate federal anti-corruption laws” by exercising its private right not to air certain content.
California State Sen. Scott Weiner went further and announced he “can’t wait to break Sinclair up.”
One Democrat-run organization that prides itself on targeting conservatives even filed a complaint with the notoriously partisan D.C. Bar in an effort to get Carr disbarred — a common lawfare tactic weaponized by leftists against their political enemies, primarily those in the Trump administration.
The filing falsely claimed that Carr, who never took formal action against Kimmel or the networks that platformed him, used “his regulatory authority to publicly demand ABC/Disney terminate late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for his commentary, threatening to investigate broadcasters that air political content with which Mr. Carr disagrees, and inaccurately claiming certain content constitutes news distortion.”
Democrats may not control Congress or the White House at this very moment, but there’s no doubt that their threats to use the bureaucracy against Americans who hamper their agenda are not empty. Time and time again, leftist administrations and institutions have weaponized their authority to silence, shut down, or strong-arm their political enemies into submission.
The latest threat of investigation from Warren and others is no exception. In fact, it’s increasingly becoming the rule.