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David Frum, a former White House aide for President George W. Bush, warned that the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show will lead to President Donald Trump’s suppression of Democratic Party speech and fundraising ― all to “head off a free and fair election in 2026.” (Watch the video below.)
CNN host Erin Burnett noted the White House’s snide response to Kimmel’s suspension on Wednesday following comments he made about Charlie Kirk. Then she passed the baton to Frum, a former speechwriter for the younger President Bush.
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Frum painted a frightening future for opposing-party politics as the 2026 midterms approach.
“We don’t have to speculate about what comes next because President Trump, in his televised speech after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and his aide Stephen Miller have already told us what is coming next,” he said.
“What is coming next is a crackdown on Democratic Party fundraising. President Trump said we are going to go after those who raise funds for causes we don’t like,” he continued. “Stephen Miller said that even more emphatically. In April of this past year, Donald Trump, at his personal command, ordered his Department of Justice — an astonishing thing for a president to do — to investigate the Democratic Party’s small-dollar donation platform, ActBlue. The attack on Democratic Party fundraising is coming next. The suppression of Democratic Party speech is coming next.”
Frum dug further into his frightening forecast.
“Look, Donald Trump has maliciously attacked the standards of living of ordinary Americans with his tariffs,” he said. “He’s enormously corrupt. He’s taking billions of dollars in meme coins and other kinds of crypto coins. He cannot afford a free and fair election in 2026, and what he thinks about every moment of the day is, ‘How do I head off a free and fair election in 2026?’ And what is happening now is part of a hastily developed strategy to seize this opportunity created by this terrible tragedy afflicting a family, afflicting many people who admired him, to make political competition in the United States unfree and unfair.”
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ABC canceled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” until further notice amid FCC threats and pressure from affiliate groups that own blocks of stations that carry the show.
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The show’s reckoning has become a flashpoint between conservatives claiming Kimmel had it coming ― and they include Trump ― and those decrying the move as a blatant stifling of free speech.