By Josh Marcus

Copyright independent

The same top-down pressure from the Trump administration that may have led to Jimmy Kimmel’s show being pulled off the air could some day come back to impact conservatives, a Fox News panelist warns.

During a Thursday episode of Outnumber, panelist Lisa Kennedy Montgomery took issue with statements from Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission boss, who seemed to threaten ABC shortly before Kimmel’s show was suspended in the wake of controversial comments the comedian made about Republicans allegedly exploiting the death of Charlie Kirk to score political points.

“If there were an FCC commissioner on the other side of the political spectrum — from someone maybe on this network — and they didn’t like their speech, would they put pressure on some of the advertisers?” she said. “And if someone from Fox moved on to Fox Broadcast, to some of the owned and operated stations there, that’s the part of this that I do not like.”

The commentator also conceded that Kimmel’s liberal politics and large staff may have proved an unattractive business proposition for the network, given intense competition from new media.

Reaction to Kimmel’s suspension has been polarizing.

Many prominent conservatives have framed the decision not as censorship but as an above-board financial call, given that ABC affiliates were threatening to stop broadcasting Kimmel’s show.

“Kimmel routinely angers viewers with his lies & progressive politics, & you can’t sell ads in it because the ratings suck,” CNN commentator Scott Jennings wrote on X on Friday. “It isn’t a free speech issue; it’s just business.”

Others accuse the Trump administration of seeking to punish a disfavored viewpoint and trample the First Amendment, pointing to recent statements from the president, who claimed on Thursday that networks are “not allowed” to air predominantly anti-Trump content and should have their broadcast licenses “taken away.”

As the FCC’s website notes, the commission does not license the large corporate broadcast networks like ABC or NBC at all, but rather the individual stations that carry their content locally. The commission also does not involve itself in content decisions.

“Broadcasters – not the FCC or any other government agency – are responsible for selecting the material they air,” according to the commission site. “The First Amendment and the Communications Act expressly prohibit the Commission from censoring broadcast matter. Our role in overseeing program content is very limited.”

Half of Americans disapprove of ABC’s decision to pull Kimmel’s show off the air, according to a new poll from YouGov.

Fellow comedians have also rallied to Kimmel’s defense.

During an episode of The Daily Show on Thursday, host Jon Stewart mocked the administration and its alleged censorship by referring to Trump in flattering, quasi-dictatorial terms like “dear leader” and “father.”

FCC Chairman Carr has suggested it could “worthwhile” to investigate another property, ABC’s daytime talk show The View, to see whether it still counts as a “bona fide news,” a status that matters because broadcasters must offer equal time to political candidates unless a program is deemed news.