Donald Trump Is a First Amendment Hatchet Man

President Donald Trump can’t take a joke. Look at the 9:20 mark of this video from the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. As President Barack Obama skewered Trump over his insidious “birther” claim, Trump was “steaming” and “beside himself with fury” at the public humiliation.

Trump is now using the presidency and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to silence critics. Comedians are near the top of Trump’s hit list because satire is an effective political weapon.

Foreign enemies aren’t attacking the First Amendment. It’s an inside job.

Carr’s Confusion

As Carr observed in 2022:

“Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more people into the discussion. That’s why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship.”

But Carr has now abandoned First Amendment principles that he and conservatives have defended repeatedly:

• In 2018, he told a Senate oversight committee: “The First Amendment operates as a restraint on the government. The idea is that we don't put a thumb on the scale in favor of one speaker or the other. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage strong, robust -- perhaps rough in some situations -- discourse.”
  
• In 2023, he posted: “Free speech is the counterweight—it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”
  
• And in an interview at an AI and tech conference on September 16, 2025—the day after Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue mentioning Charlie Kirk—Carr said: “I think you can draw a pretty clear line, and the Supreme Court has done this for decades, that our First Amendment, our free speech tradition, protects almost all speech.”

But a day later, Carr reversed course in a September 17 interview with a right-wing podcaster: “Frankly, when you see stuff like this—I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr added that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at,” pointedly suggesting that local stations should “push back” and “step up” to protect their FCC licenses by pressuring networks to change programming content.

Hours later, two major owners of local television stations—Nexstar, which seeks FCC approval of its $6.2 billion acquisition of rival TEGNA, and Sinclair, which longstanding Trump supporters control—announced that they were preempting Kimmel’s program. Together those owners account for about one-quarter of ABC affiliates.

Before the day ended, Disney-owned ABC suspended Kimmel. Bipartisan outrage was immediate.

• Conservative podcaster Joe Rogan said that conservatives cheering support for government interference with Kimmel’s free speech rights were “crazy.”
• Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) likened Carr’s threat to mob-like behavior: “And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Carr insisted that he hadn’t threatened anyone.

But when Disney announced Kimmel’s return, Carr responded: “Democrats just keep digging themselves a deeper & deeper hole on Kimmel….” He reiterated his plan to empower FCC-licensed local stations to reject network programming.

Then Carr took everyone through the looking glass and accused Democrats of “illegally weaponizing government to silence dissent.”

Trump’s Threats

As Carr insisted that he was not threatening ABC, Trump’s warnings were clear and direct. An hour before ABC aired Kimmel’s return, Trump posted:

“Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy.... I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative.”

Trump's referencing of Disney’s $16 million payment to settle his dubious lawsuit against ABC proves what most children learn in elementary school: If you don’t stand up to a bully, you empower him and efforts to appease him will never be enough.

Nexstar and Sinclair didn’t air Kimmel’s return. But their Trump-pandering efforts to prevent viewers from seeing the program were futile: His monologue went viral with millions of views on YouTube.

During the monologue, Kimmel played a video of Trump saying that the late-night host “had no ratings.”

“I do tonight,” Kimmel quipped.

Future Fights

When CBS cancelled Colbert’s program, Trump gloated, “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

When ABC suspended Kimmel, Trump posted:

“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible.”

Then he added:

“That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”

But Trump’s media targets go far beyond late-night talk show hosts. Jonathan Karl of ABC News asked Trump about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s unconstitutional plan to “go after hate speech… A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.”

“We’ll probably go after people like you,” Trump replied, “because you treat me so unfairly with hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart… So maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

The next day, Trump renewed his periodic threat to target negative network news coverage of him.

“They're getting a license,” Trump said. “I think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr.”

Trump is incorrect. Kimmel returned to the airwaves because Carr’s threats produced bipartisan outrage, customers cancelled subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu, consumers began boycotts, Disney’s stock price dropped, and Hollywood A-list celebrities arrived in force to protest Kimmel’s suspension.

The fate of the First Amendment won’t be up to Brendan Carr or Donald Trump. It will be up to the American people. And they won’t go down without a fight.