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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday that the Trump administration’s vindictive way of dealing with late night host Jimmy Kimmel was “right out of ‘Goodfellas,’” the iconic mob movie, and that it set a dangerous precedent.
President Donald Trump has been railing against “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the host made comments about controversial right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed last week in Utah. Kimmel’s show was subsequently suspended indefinitely.
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The president even said aboard Air Force One that “evening shows” are “not allowed” to criticize him, and suggested he had the power to go after their licenses if they did not obey.
Cruz recapped the situation on his podcast, “Verdict With Ted Cruz.”
“So, the Federal Communications Commission is in charge of granting broadcast licenses. So ABC, NBC, CBS, they have licenses from the FCC,” he said.
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“It is true that, under statute, they are required to be in the public interest. What he is saying is that Jimmy Kimmel was lying. That’s true, he was lying. And his lying to the American people is not in the public interest and so he threatens, explicitly, we’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take them off the air so ABC cannot broadcast anymore,” Cruz said, referencing FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Carr went on a right-wing podcast this week where he threatened stations that aired Kimmel after the comedian suggested Republicans were using Kirk’s death to score “political points,” and that the accused killer, Tyler Robinson, might have been right-wing himself. The day after Kimmel made the comments, authorities released information that muddled the picture of Robinson’s politics.
Affecting an Italian mobster accent, Cruz went on: ”[Carr] says, ‘We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.’”
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“And I gotta say that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas,’” the senator said. “That’s right out of a mafioso going into a bar and saying, ‘Nice bar you got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
Authorities released text messages allegedly sent between Robinson and a romantic partner, whom they identified as transgender. Robinson allegedly said that he had the opportunity to shoot Kirk at an open-air college campus event some 250 miles away and was going to take it because he was tired of Kirk’s “hate.”
While Cruz made it clear that he was no fan of Kimmel’s, he went on to say that booting him from the airwaves set a dangerous precedent, as it could open the door for Democrats to go after conservative broadcasters who have helped to push Trump’s lies in the past.
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“Jimmy Kimmel has mocked me so many times I cannot count,” Cruz said. “I am thrilled that he is fired.”
“Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again. They will silence us,” he added. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly, and that is dangerous.”
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ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel’s show was accompanied by pledges from big corporations that own local broadcasters to air other content in its place, if production continued.
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