Trump Is Making Jimmy Kimmel A Free Speech Hero Again
In case you missed it, after Melania and Donald Trump decided, three days after Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue, that he should be punished for someone not connected to Kimmel allegedly trying to kill the president, Trump puppet and FCC chair Brendan Carr is trying to pressure ABC to fire Kimmel. Again. After the last effort to be rid of him backfired so spectacularly, Carr is now using the fig leaf of accusing the network of being too inclusive.
As The New York Times explains it, Carr’s order to review all of ABC’s broadcast licenses is not likely to succeed. To take away the licenses, the FCC “must be able to make a convincing case that the stations had shown a pattern of violating rules and regulations,” The Times said. “Even if the F.C.C. ultimately decides to block the renewal of ABC’s station licenses, the network would have ample recourse in the courts. And it would be able to continue to broadcast as the fight played out.”
But, like so much of Trump’s fascism, the move is more about intimidation than legal strategy. Carr's maneuver “all but guarantees months if not years of legal wrangling that would lock the network in an expensive, running war with the federal government,” The Times noted.