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jimmy kimmel
House Democratic Leaders Demand 'Corrupt' Trump FCC Chair Resign After Kimmel Firing
"The censoring of artists and cancellation of shows is an act of cowardice," said the Democratic lawmakers.
Sep 18, 2025
Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives on Thursday issued a joint statement demanding the resignation of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr over his role in getting ABC to suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
The statement, which was signed by Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), accused Carr of corruption with his overt threats against ABC unless the network stopped airing Kimmel's show.
"Brendan Carr, the so-called chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has engaged in the corrupt abuse of power," they said. "He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC, the employer of Jimmy Kimmel, and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration."
The Democrats also took shots at ABC for so quickly caving to pressure from the Trump administration and vowed to investigate the incident.
"Media companies, such as the one that suspended Mr. Kimmel, have a lot to explain," they said. "The censoring of artists and cancellation of shows is an act of cowardice. It may also be part of a corrupt pay-to-play scheme. House Democrats will make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power. This will not be forgotten."
ABC announced that Kimmel would be suspended indefinitely just hours after car told right-wing influencer Benny Johnson in a podcast episode that the network could have its broadcast license revoked unless Kimmel was taken off the air.
"There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters," Carr said. "And frankly, I think that it's sort of really past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say... we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of these distortions."
The Trump administration has shown no intention of backing off its threats to broadcasters that air content it deems objectionable, and on Thursday morning White House Faith Liaison Jenny Korn hailed the suspension of Kimmel during an appearance on Newsmax while suggesting it was proper retaliation for his remarks about the slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"Thank goodness for companies now who are firing nurses and teachers and people like Jimmy Kimmel, because people should not be able to celebrate others' deaths in a very public way and then keep their jobs," she said.
Kimmel never celebrated Kirk’s murder and explicitly condemned it, but drew the ire of conservatives this week when he mentioned how the far-right MAGA movement, including President Donald Trump, tried "to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and accused the right of trying "to score political points" from the killing. Activists claimed the remark suggested that the suspect in the killing, Tyler Robinson, could have been a Republican.
Leaked chats between Robinson and his roommate on Tuesday suggested that the suspect wasn't "firmly aligned with any political movement at all," as one journalist said.
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Democracy Needs a Fearless Press and Vice Versa—Trump Is Killing Both
Make no mistake. Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism of him and his administration constitute another of his attacks on democracy. But there are things we can do to fight back.
Sep 18, 2025
Donald Trump has sued the New York Times for, well, reporting on Trump.
Rather than charging the Times with any specific libelous act, Trump’s lawsuit is just another of his angry bloviations.
The lawsuit says he’s moving against "one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual ‘mouthpiece’ for the Radical Left Democrat Party.” And so on.
At least he sued The Wall Street Journal’s parent company for something specific — reporting Trump’s birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein (which Trump continues to deny even though it showed up in the Epstein files).
Last year, Trump sued ABC and its host George Stephanopoulos for having said that Trump was found liable for rape rather than "sexual abuse" in the civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll. The network settled for $16 million
Trump sued CBS for allegedly editing an interview with Kamala Harris on "60 Minutes" to make her sound more coherent. CBS also agreed to pay $16 million.
Defamation lawsuits are a longstanding part of Trump’s repertoire, which he first learned at the feet of Roy Cohn, one of America’s most notorious legal bullies.
In the 1980s, Trump sued the Pulitzer-winning Chicago Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp for $500 million, for criticizing Trump’s plan to build the world’s tallest building in Manhattan, a 150-story tower that Gapp called "one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city.”
Trump charged that Gapp had "virtually torpedoed" the project and subjected Trump to "public ridicule and contempt." A judge later dismissed the suit as involving protected opinion.
But such lawsuits are far worse when a president sues. He’s no longer just an individual whose reputation can be harmed. He’s the head of the government of the United States. One of the cardinal responsibilities of the media in our democracy is to report on a president — and often criticize him.
The legal standard for defamation of a public figure, established in a 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, requires that public officials who bring such suits prove that a false statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth.
That case arose from a libel suit filed by L.B. Sullivan, the police commissioner of Montgomery, Alabama, against the New York Times for an advertisement in the paper that, despite being mostly true, contained factual errors concerning the mistreatment of civil rights demonstrators.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Times, finding that the ad was protected speech under the First Amendment and that the higher standard of proof was necessary to protect robust debate on public affairs.
Under this standard, there’s no chance Trump will prevail in his latest lawsuits against the Times or Wall Street Journal. Nor would he have won his lawsuits against ABC and CBS, had they gone to trial.
But Trump hasn’t filed these lawsuits to win in court. He has sought wins in the court of public opinion. These lawsuits are aspects of his performative presidency.
ABC’s and CBS’s settlements are viewed by Trump as vindications of his gripes with the networks.
He’s likewise using his lawsuit against the New York Times to advertise his long standing grievances with the paper.
His lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal is intended to send a message to the Journal’s publisher, Rupert Murdoch, that Trump doesn’t want Murdoch to muck around in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
These lawsuits also put the media on notice that Trump could mess up their businesses.
Not only is it costly to defend against them — requiring attorney’s fees, inordinate time of senior executives, and efforts to defend the media’s brand and reputation.
When a lawsuit comes from the president of the United States who also has the power to damage a business by imposing regulations and prosecuting the corporation for any alleged wrongdoings, the potential costs can be huge.
Which presumably is why CBS caved rather than litigated. Its parent company, Paramount, wanted to be able to sell it for some $8 billion to Skydance, whose CEO is David Ellison (scion of the second-richest person in America, Oracle’s Larry Ellison). But Paramount first needed the approval of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission — which held up the sale until the defamation lawsuit was settled.
Here we come to the central danger of Trump’s wanton use of personal defamation law. The mere possibility of its use — coupled with Trump’s other powers of retribution — have a potential chilling effect on media criticism of Trump.
We don’t know how much criticism has been stifled to date, but it’s suggestive that a CBS News president and the executive producer of “60 Minutes” resigned over CBS’s handling of the lawsuit and settlement, presumably because they felt that management was limiting their ability to fairly and freely cover Trump.
It’s also indicative that CBS ended Stephen Colbert’s contract. Colbert’s show is the highest-rated late night comedy show on television. He’s also one of the most trenchant critics of Trump.
Among the capitulations CBS’s owners made to the Trump administration was to hire an “ombudsman” to police the network against so-called bias — and the person they hired was Kenneth R. Weinstein, the former president and chief executive of the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute think tank.
Note also that on Wednesday ABC pulled off the air another popular late-night critic of Trump — Jimmy Kimmel — because Kimmel in a monologue earlier this week charged that Trump’s “MAGA gang” was trying “to score political points” from Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
ABC announced the move after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, appeared to threaten ABC, and its parent company Disney, for airing Kimmel’s monologue —ominously threatening: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and related businesses, has muzzled the editorial page of the Washington Post — prohibiting it from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and imposing a stringent set of criteria on all editorials and opinion columns, which has led to the resignations of its opinion page editor and a slew of its opinion writers.
Trump hasn’t sued the Washington Post for defamation, but Bezos presumably understands Trump’s potential for harming his range of businesses and wants to avoid Trump’s wrath.
Make no mistake. Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism of him and his administration constitute another of his attacks on democracy.
What can be done? Two important steps are warranted.
First, the New York Times v. Sullivan standard should be far stricter when a president of the United States seeks to use defamation law against a newspaper or media platform that criticizes him.
Instead of requiring that he prove that a false statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth, he should have to prove that the false statement materially impaired his ability to perform his official duties.
Better yet, a president should have no standing to bring defamation suits. He has no need to bring them. Through his office he already possesses sufficient — if not too much — power to suppress criticism.
Second, antitrust authorities should not allow large corporations or ultra-wealthy individuals with many other business interests to buy major newspapers or media platforms. They cannot be trusted to prioritize the public’s right to know over their financial interests in their range of businesses.
The richest person in the world was allowed to buy X, one of the most influential news platforms on earth, and has turned it into a cesspool of rightwing lies and conspiracy theories.
The family of the second-richest person in the world now owns CBS.
The third-richest person now owns the Washington Post.
The Disney corporation — with its wide range of business enterprises — owns ABC.
The problem isn’t concentrated wealth per se. It’s that these business empires are potentially more important to their owners than is the public’s right to know.
If Democrats win back control of Congress next year, they should encode these two initiatives in legislation.
Democracy depends on a fearless press. Trump and the media that have caved in to him are jeopardizing it and thereby undermining our democracy
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'Red Alert Moment' for Free Speech as ABC Cowers to Trump FCC and Cancels Kimmel
"These companies are turning the public airwaves into another propaganda arm of the Trump regime," said one critic.
Sep 18, 2025
First Amendment advocates on Wednesday evening demanded that media companies "stop capitulating—and start fighting back" against President Donald Trump and his administration after FCC chair Brendan Carr successfully pressured ABC to pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel's talk show from the air indefinitely over comments he made about the aftermath of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder.
ABC announced the decision just hours after Carr said on a podcast that the network; its owner, the Walt Disney Company; and its affiliates must "find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel."
Carr took issue with remarks Kimmel made in his Monday night broadcast—remarks that had more to do with Trump's far-right MAGA movement than Kirk or the suspect in his killing, Tyler Robinson, but which right-wing activists claimed portrayed Robinson as a conservative.
“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.
This is what got Jimmy Kimmel fired.
The Dear Leader was not pleased.
pic.twitter.com/SzilavNgYA
— Maine (@TheMaineWonk) September 18, 2025
Carr said Wednesday, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” suggesting the FCC would take action to pull "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" from the air unless ABC made the decision itself.
According to The New York Times, Disney CEO Robert Iger and co-chair Dana Walden made the decision to take the show off the air, and Rolling Stone reported that in meetings on Wednesday, many executives believed Kimmel had done nothing wrong—"but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed."
Nexstar, which owns ABC affiliate stations across the country and is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger with rival company Tegna, fell in line soon after Carr's remarks, saying it would preempt Kimmel's show on its affiliates. Sinclair, another affiliate owner, also said it would preempt the program and called on Kimmel to make a "meaningful personal donation" to the Kirk family and Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, for describing the far-right's decision to immediately blame the left for Kirk's assassination.
Craig Aaron, CEO of the First Amendment advocacy group Free Press, noted that ABC attempted to "buy off Trump with a ridiculous legal settlement last year" when it gave $15 million to his presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit—but the move made no difference when Carr disapproved of Kimmel's remarks.
“ABC keeps caving regardless of how meritless the administration’s claims are—and how much lasting damage they’re doing to free speech in America," said Aaron. "These companies are turning the public airwaves into another propaganda arm of the Trump regime."
"Donald Trump and Brendan Carr have turned the FCC into the Federal Censorship Commission, ignoring the First Amendment and replacing the rule of law with the whims of right-wing bloggers," added Aaron. "They’re abusing their power to shake down media companies with their dangerous demands for dishonest coverage and Orwellian compliance with the administration’s demands. This is nothing more than censorship and extortion."
The administration's latest attack on the media, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has been characterized by "last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump's approval."
"Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy," she said. "It sure looks like giant media companies are enabling his authoritarianism."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a video posted on social media that the US public is witnessing "the systematic destruction of free speech in this country," noting that "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" was also recently cancelled, effective next May. CBS announced the decision as its parent company, Paramount, was seeking approval of an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance. The merger was approved days later.
"This is a moment for the country to mobilize," said Murphy. "This is a moment for all of us to be out on the streets protesting because if you don't raise your voices right now about the assault on free speech, about Donald Trump's decision to disgustingly exploit the murder of Charlie Kirk, so as to try to permanently render powerless and impotent those who politically oppose him—there may be no democracy to save a year from now."
"This is a red alert moment," he added.
The abrupt cancellation of Kimmel's show in response to his comments comes after numerous attacks on free speech by the Trump administration. In March, former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk were among the foreign students who were detained by masked immigration agents and threatened with deportation for speaking out against US support for Israel's assault on Gaza. Both have since been released; on Wednesday Khalil and his legal team said they would fight an immigration judge's ruling that could pave the way for his deportation to Algeria or Syria.
Trump also announced a lawsuit against The New York Times and book publisher Penguin Random House over reporting and news analysis that was unfavorable to him.
“Jimmy Kimmel is the latest target of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional plan to silence its critics and control what the American people watch and read," said Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division at the ACLU. "Cowering to threats, ABC and the biggest owner of its affiliate stations gave the Trump FCC chairman exactly what he wanted by suspending Kimmel indefinitely and dropping the show."
“This is beyond McCarthyism. Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke," said Anders. "The Trump administration's actions, paired with ABC's capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”
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