FCC Chair Takes Victory Lap After Muzzling Kimmel

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr—who just a few years ago was waxing poetic about how political satire is the “oldest and most important form of free speech”—is now using The Office GIFs to celebrate taking away Jimmy Kimmel’s freedom of speech.

Carr appeared on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast and floated punishing Kimmel for making remarks about Trump’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s killing. While ABC was not initially going to rebuke Kimmel, as his statements were pretty run of the mill, threats from Carr and the Trump administration regarding pulling their broadcast licenses made them cave. Late that night they suspended Kimmel indefinitely.

Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, has been jubilant in the days since Kimmel’s muzzling. Wednesday night he went on Hannity for a victory lap.

“Late-night shows, something’s gone seriously awry there. They went from going for applause, for laugh lines, to applause lines. They went from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology,” Carr told Hannity. “There’s more work to go, but I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of the community and we don’t just have progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.

Kimmel is no cleric. And Carr is rich for acting as if his firing was the product of some local, grassroots campaign when it’s extremely clear that this was a result of direct pressure on ABC from the federal government.

The backlash to Carr’s spineless hypocrisy has been swift, as receipt after receipt of him defending the same principles he is now attacking is circulating widely.

“Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not,” he said in 2019. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of ‘public interest.’”

“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself—Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he said the very next year. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”