U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for its recent threats against ABC earlier this week.
Cruz said on his podcast that it was a “real mistake” for Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to threaten ABC’s broadcasting license if the network did not pull late night host Jimmy Kimmel from the air. Kimmel faced backlash over his comments about the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, leading some ABC-affiliates to vow to not air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”.
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy. He’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him. But what he said there is dangerous as hell,” Cruz said during Friday’s podcast.
Cruz then compared Carr’s threat to the popular mob movie, “GoodFellas.”
“He threatens explicitly, ‘We’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take him off the air so ABC cannot broadcast it’…He says, ‘We can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.’ 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,’” Cruz said.
Cruz went on to call corporate media “dishonest” and “liars,” adding that he is “thrilled” that Kimmel was suspended. However, Cruz warned that threatening to take critics off the airwaves could end up hurting Republicans in the long run.
“But let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like.’ That will end up bad for conservatives,” Cruz said.
“There will come a time when a Democrat wins again, wins the White House,“ Cruz continued. “They will silence us. They will use this power. They will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”
He explained that if Kimmel “slandered” Kirk’s family with his comments, a defamation lawsuit against ABC would be the “remedy” for that.
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,’”Cruz said. “And it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, but when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”
“And so again, I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business. We should denounce it. It’s fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable, disgraceful, and he should be off air, but we shouldn’t be threatening government power to force him off air. That’s a real mistake,” he added.
The controversy centers on Kimmel’s comments from Monday’s show, in which he suggested that the alleged killer of Kirk, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, could have been a MAGA Republican.
“The MAGA Gang (is) 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. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
Carr, the FCC chair, told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson on Wednesday that there was a “strong case” for legal action over Kimmel’s comments.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on Johnson’s show. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
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