By Molly McVety

Copyright phillyvoice

Jake Tapper called ABC’s decision to indefinitely suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the result of “a direct violation of the First Amendment,” during an appearance Thursday night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

ABC pulled Kimmel’s show from the air Wednesday for comments Kimmel made Monday night about the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot in Utah last week. Kimmel said the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid … as anything other than one of them” and attempting to score “political points from it.”

Tapper cited Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s comments on right-wing podcast “The Benny Show,” in which he accused Kimmel of attempting to “mislead the American public” and implied that Disney, ABC and ABC affiliates should take direct action against Kimmel or risk losing their licenses from the FCC.

Following Carr’s remarks, Nexstar Media Group — which needs FCC approval to complete its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna — said it would stop broadcasting Kimmel’s show on its 32 ABC affiliates.

“This is a direct violation of the First Amendment, because it’s the government telling companies what to do with the implicit threat of ‘we can do this the easy way, or the hard way,'” Tapper said, quoting Carr’s comments. “I have never seen an FCC chairman call for a direct action by local affiliates to do something, to remove a speaker and speech that they don’t like. It’s chilling.”

The First Amendment protects free speech, freedom of the press and several other rights.

Tapper recounted the history of the press criticizing people in power noting that Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, repeatedly “ripped into” George Washington in a Philadelphia newspaper.

“That’s in the lifeblood of this country,” the Queen Village native said. “Since then, presidents have had an uneasy relationship with the press, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Tapper said the FCC may have set a dangerous precedent for future presidential administrations to utilize and pointed to “corporate chieftains” acquiescing to the Trump administation for the sake of their financial interests.

“Even if you don’t like (Kimmel), this is a horrible precedent, it’s so short-sighted,” Tapper said. “… We don’t know how it’s going to end, the money has an impact and is causing people to … focus only on that and not the important parts of this American experiment.”

Tapper also promoted his new book, “Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever Way,” which details how American prosecutors rushed to create a case against a powerful Al-Qaeda operative. Tapper will be at the Suzanne Roberts Theater in Center City on Oct. 15 to discuss the book, which comes out Oct. 7.