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President Donald Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of government and society intensified on Wednesday with the suspension of comedian Jimmy Kimmel by ABC’s parent company Disney following threats from the Federal Communications Commission.
The suspension of Kimmel’s late night talk show is the gravest and most clear attack on free speech rights in generations. FCC chairman Brendan Carr publicly called for Kimmel to be removed from the air over a joke he made about how the Trump administration sought to cast blame on anyone to their left for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The pressure to fire Kimmel was backed by threats to pull broadcast licenses of ABC affiliates if the comedian wasn’t taken off the air.
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This is blatantly illegal. The First Amendment explicitly protects against government censorship of speech. The government cannot threaten broadcasters to censor speech or punish speakers for their speech no matter what the person said.
“This is beyond McCarthyism,” Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke. The Trump administration’s actions, paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”
It is also the latest dead canary in the coal mine of Trump’s attempt at authoritarian consolidation. By forcing the suspension of Kimmel, Trump is seizing control over the media. He is dictating what can be said and who can say it. This is an effort to strike fear in the entertainment industry and the press, and destroy their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
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That this crackdown focused on a comedian is in line with the recent history of authoritarian consolidation efforts.
“Comedy doesn’t change the world, but it’s a bellwether,” Jon Stewart, the on-and-off host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, said in 2022. “When a society feels under threat, comedians are who get sent away first.”
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After winning election in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin forced the cancellation of a comedy puppet show that mocked him during his election campaign. In Egypt, both the elected government of Mohammed Morsi and the military government of Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, which overthrew Morsi in a coup, persecuted comedian Bassem Youseff, who criticized the Morsi government and made comments that were viewed as critical of Islam, eventually driving him off the air in 2014.
Trump is following the lead of these authoritarians. And it’s no laughing matter. If you can’t make a joke, how can you say something critical of the regime ― even something vile ― with a straight face.
Kimmel is only the latest victim of the administration’s speech crackdown. From the beginning, Trump cracked down on the speech of immigrant students for voicing support for Palestine by arresting them and threatening them with deportation. He issued executive orders purporting to ban speech related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, transgender rights and support for immigrants, and used those orders to force censorship on universities, nonprofits, researchers and law firms. Trump has also repeatedly pressured media companies with frivolous lawsuits, most recently targeting The New York Times, in an attempt to threaten and punish them into altering coverage.
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Trump has also been aided by decades of lax antitrust enforcement and decades of media mergers that has seen the entertainment industry consolidate in fewer and fewer conglomerates. The rampant condensation gives Trump both fewer targets on which to focus his attention, and immense leverage over the companies seeking favorable regulation or government approval for further mergers and acquisitions.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a comedian who frequently lambasts Trump and conservatives, was abruptly canceled after the FCC approved the purchase of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, to Skydance, a media conglomerate owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle CEO and Trump supporter Larry Ellison. That deal came with stipulations on CBS to make its coverage more conservative, including the installation of an ideological minder to increase bias for conservatives. David Ellison is also reportedly looking to purchase the conservative site The Free Press and install its editor, Bari Weiss, as head of CBS News.
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Skydance is now in talks to purchase Warner Bros Discovery, a conglomerate that owns CNN. While cable television is not regulated by the FCC, the regulator does review media mergers. It could create another point of pressure for the FCC to force another media company to bend to conservative demands over coverage. Even without such a stipulation, Ellison could demand CNN alter its coverage to support Trump.
And on Tuesday, Larry Ellison’s Oracle was announced as one of three companies set to purchase the U.S. arm of TikTok. Marc Andreesen, the Trump-supporting head of Silicon Valley venture capital firm a16z, was also said to be one of the three buyers. That purchase also reportedly gives Trump power over the social media company, with the government receiving a board seat on the new U.S.-based company.
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This is the style of regime media consolidation recently seen under the autocratic Hungarian President Viktor Orban. Trump supporters view Orban as a model to follow, feting him at their events, including the Conservative Political Action Conference and the National Conservatism conference.
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But the U.S. isn’t Hungary. Or Russia. Or Egypt. None of those countries has a constitutional right to free speech and a free press like the U.S. Nor do they have a culture that supports freedom of speech, expression and the press.
Trump’s effort to destroy free speech is bound to be intensely unpopular in a society where free speech is a paramount value. The courts are likely, one would hope, to find it illegal, as well. In the meantime, this crackdown is designed to instill fear in everyone from wealthy televised comedians to the regular Joe who just posts online. Just remember, fear is the mind-killer.