Capitulation and the Attack on Free Speech

The crackdown on Jimmy Kimmel is an outrage that puts us all at risk

Jimmy Kimmel hosting the Oscars last year. (Photo by Kevin Winter)

It’s gotten so easy to pick out the bad guys. One after another, at an escalating pace, the corporate cowards are abandoning their duty as citizens and kowtowing to Trump in a pathetic display of weakness and avarice. They are proving they care more about their profits and pockets than their country.

We should not be surprised that they are facilitating the rejection of our sacred democratic right of free speech. But we should be outraged, angry enough to see their utter lack of principle as the regime exploits the Charlie Kirk murder to silence dissent and consolidate its power.

Are you feeling outrage right now? Honestly, I hope so. And I hope you can hold onto that feeling in the months ahead as many Americans gloss over the meaning of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel being taken off the air “indefinitely” or become accustomed to a regime that is expanding its assault on critics. I won’t linger on those who are gleefully applauding this un-American, McCarthyite rush to deny freedom of expression and spread fear, which surely includes right-wing acolytes who previously decried the horrors of cancel culture.

You’ve probably heard the facts by now. In his monologue Monday night, Kimmel said, “We had 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 with everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

It should be noted that this comment accurately captures the aggressive effort by Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and others on social media to blame “the radical left” for Kirk’s death, even if it vaguely implies that the confessed murderer is pro-MAGA and likely based at that point on his family background. (Here’s my take on this in the two-minute video I shared yesterday.)

On Wednesday, less than two days later, the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr hopped on The Benny Show, a conservative podcast, to describe Kimmel’s remarks as “truly sick” and to threaten Disney (ABC is its subsidiary). Sounding like a gangster, Carr said, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. They can do this the easy way or the hard way,” adding, “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

This, by the way, is the same guy who, in 2023 when Joe Biden was president, posted on X: “Free speech is the counterweight—it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” But that was then, before Carr’s dream authoritarian was controlling the levers of power.

Did the media moguls back their comedian, a standard-bearer for ABC for more than two decades with Jimmy Kimmel Live!? Did they stand up for the principle of free speech in a demonstration of their commitment to our beloved country?

Of course not.

Not after Carr threatened ABC’s broadcast license. Not after Nexstar Media Group said that its ABC-affiliated local stations would preempt Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight’s show” because of Kimmel’s comments. Not while Nexstar needs FCC approval of a planned $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, a media rival which also owns ABC affiliate stations. Not while Disney is trying to complete a deal between ESPN, which it owns, and the NFL.

The business of America is what? Just business? Surely for this crowd not upholding the First Amendment when a dictatorial White House occupant doesn’t like what’s said. Surely not when their financial interests are at risk. We learned that previously when Paramount, the owner of CBS, canceled Stephen Colbert’s late-night show earlier this year.

Once Carr’s threats came down and right-wing affiliates like Nexstar piled on, the outcome of the emergency meeting of Disney chief Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment head Dana Walden was essentially preordained: They dropped to their knees, capitulated to Trump and his FCC henchman, abdicated their duty as American citizens and desecrated the fundamental right of free expression.

To be clear, Jimmy Kimmel had more to say. On Jan. 11, the day after Kirk’s killing and Trump’s angry response, Kimmel said, “Like the rest of the country, we're still trying to wrap our heads around the senseless murder of the popular podcaster and conservative activist Charlie Kirk yesterday, whose death has amplified our anger, our differences.” He went on:

And I've seen a lot of extraordinarily vile responses to this from both sides of the political spectrum. Some people are cheering this, which is something I won't ever understand. We had another school shooting yesterday in Colorado—the 100th one of the year. And with all these terrible things happening, you would think that our president would at least make an attempt to bring us together, but he didn't.

President Obama did. President Biden did. Presidents Bush and Clinton did. President Trump did not. Instead, he blamed Democrats for their rhetoric. The man who told a crowd of supporters that maybe the Second Amendment people should do something about Hillary Clinton, the man who said he wouldn't mind if someone shot through the fake news media, the man who unleashed a mob on the Capitol and said Liz Cheney should face nine barrels shooting at her for supporting his opponent—blames the radical left for their rhetoric.

It was, of course, far from the first time Kimmel had criticized the thin-skinned despot. And it was a reasonable response that sought unity and criticized Trump for his angry divisiveness. That sounded about right to me, but not for those now determined to turn Kirk into a martyred saint and censor anyone who refuses to get with that program or offer fealty to their king.

On cue, the thin-skinned Trump posted on his falsely named Truth Social platform. “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote. “Kimmel has ZERO talent.” He then escalated his attacks against Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. All this from London, where he’s obviously not sufficiently satiated by all the fawning of nervous Brits at their official state visit, nor by the various tech billionaire hangers-on who jetted in to showcase their allegiance.

Maybe it seems this story is only about Jimmy Kimmel, a media story about a highly paid comedian who will be just fine, whether his “indefinite” ends soon or never at all. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this all straight out of the authoritarian playbook. It’s a terrible omen that there will be more to come, especially thanks to capitulating media moguls and other cowardly, avaricious billionaires.

We are all Jimmy Kimmel. If they can silence him, they can try and silence all of us. Don’t doubt that’s what they’re aiming to do.

If we still believe in America and reject Trump’s regime and the expanding capitulation of corporate sell-outs abandoning our sacred right of free speech, we must not let them. We must speak out. We must say this is wrong. We must stick together. We must take to the streets in the millions to display our collective power.

Let me leave you with an ominously resonant story from February 13, 1939, published by Time magazine. It’s the story of Werner Finck, a German cabaret comedian and performer. “Until last week a favorite entertainer of Berlin’s cafe society was twinkly-eyed Werner Finck, one of the daring, politically sophisticated German comedians who get their laughs at the expense of the Nazis,” the article begins. It continues:

Comedian Finck would suddenly interrupt his patter, shoot his arm up in a burlesque Nazi salute—and then adjust a picture. Deftly, but unmistakably, he would caricature the well-known posturing of top-rank Nazis. Sometimes when he walked off the stage he mimicked gimpy Dr. Joseph Goebbels. For these offenses he has often been in the Nazi doghouse, once in a concentration camp. Last week the Nazi bigwigs finally caught on, and Propaganda Minister Goebbels expelled Finck, a fellow vaudeville actor and a comedy team, ‘The Three Rulands,’ from the Reich’s Culture Chamber as “desecrators of things that are holy” to the Nazis. Thus kaput was written to their German careers.

I don’t like the current echo, not when there’s a rising tide of Trump sycophants ready to assert that today’s critics represent “desecrators of things that are holy” to Trump and his regime—and seek to end their careers. For now—indeed as long as we have eyes, ears, minds and courage to keep using them—let’s continue to assert that we are a nation of laws, not men. Let’s take strength from President Theodore Roosevelt’s admonition in 1918:

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country.

There will be tough days ahead, I can guarantee it. (Just yesterday, Trump was threatening to revoke the licenses of any broadcasters that dared to air negative commentary and coverage of him.) But let’s stay strong, refuse to be scared into silence and embrace our shared obligation to stand up for America.

If not now, when?

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