The President’s Pleasure: How a Comedian Was Silenced

3 minutes read time.

UPDATE 4:57 PM ET-via New York Times: President Trump said federal regulators should revoke broadcast licenses over late-night hosts who speak negatively about him, a day after ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” after pressure from the Federal Communications Commission chairman. Mr. Trump and administration officials have long championed free speech, but their actions — as well as their promises since Charlie Kirk’s killing — to guarantee it have been replaced by efforts to quash criticism. Congressional Democrats plan to introduce long-shot legislation to bolster legal protections for people targeted by the president for speaking freely.

It did not begin with a government decree. The modern American censorship campaign is a more sophisticated affair, a coordinated strangulation using corporate leverage and regulatory threats, all to the gleeful applause of the President. On Wednesday, this playbook was executed with chilling precision, and its target was Jimmy Kimmel.

The late-night host’s show, a fixture on ABC for over two decades, was suspended “indefinitely.” His crime was a monologue that mocked the political maneuvering following the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “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,” Kimmel told his audience, “and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

For this, his voice was extinguished. But the decision was not made in a vacuum. It was the result of a targeted, three-pronged attack.

The first move came from corporate partner Nexstar Media Group, a behemoth that owns 23 of ABC’s local affiliate stations. In a statement, Nexstar President Andrew Alford declared that continuing to air Kimmel was “simply not in the public interest,” co-opting the language of a federal regulator to justify a business decision. The move created an immediate financial and logistical crisis for ABC. It also cannot be separated from the fact that Nexstar has a massive $6.2 billion merger to acquire rival Tegna, currently pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

The second, more menacing move came from that very regulator. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, an appointee of the President, issued a threat that was as brazen as it was arguably illegal. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr warned on a conservative podcast, explicitly telling Disney it could “take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.” He publicly praised Nexstar for “doing the right thing” and openly incited other affiliates to follow suit. The threat of revoking broadcast licenses—an action so rare it is almost unheard of—was dangled as a weapon. As Christopher Anders of the ACLU noted, this is an abuse of power that is “beyond McCarthyism.”

Faced with an affiliate revolt and a direct threat from the federal government, Disney CEO Robert Iger and his television chief, Dana Walden, capitulated. They pulled the plug on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” before the host even had a chance to address the controversy on his own show, preemptively silencing his rebuttal.

The final act was the celebration. From Windsor Castle, President Donald Trump took to social media to gloat. “Great News for America,” he wrote. “The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.” His glee was that of a man seeing a long-held grudge settled. After CBS canceled the show of his other late-night foil, Stephen Colbert, the President had publicly predicted Kimmel was “NEXT.”

The irony is that Kimmel himself saw this coming. Just weeks ago, he mocked the President’s thin skin on air. “Did we hurt your feelings?” Kimmel asked. “You want us to be canceled because we make jokes about you?”

The question was prophetic. In the current political climate, the answer is an unambiguous yes. This was not a network responding to public outrage; it was a corporation and its parent company cowering before a government that has successfully weaponized its regulatory power. As Ari Cohn of the free speech group FIRE concluded, “We cannot be a country where late-night talk show hosts serve at the pleasure of the president. But until institutions grow a backbone and learn to resist government pressure, that is the country we are.”