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Free Kimmel. Impeach Carr. Impeach Trump
The
president and his FCC appointees should not threaten TV stations over
jokes. That’s a simple case the public will understand.
by Bill Scher
Freedom of speech is a fundamental tenet in the United States Constitution,
yet periodically faces severe tests. In 1918, Eugene V. Debs was
imprisoned for violating a hastily enacted federal law effectively
banning anti-war speech. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. was repeatedly arrested by Southern officials on trumped-up charges
designed to suppress his calls for racial equality.
After
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush
pledged to “hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly
acts.” The host of the ABC late-night show Politically Incorrect,
Bill Maher, chided Bush, “We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise
missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane
when it hits the building, say what you want about it. It’s not
cowardly.” After the show was temporarily pulled by some local ABC affiliates and some businesses cancelled ads, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer made the menacing comment, “people have to watch what they say and watch what they do.”
ABC cancelled the show the following year, replacing Bill Maher with ... Jimmy Kimmel.
Twenty-three
years later, another administration threatens ABC’s late-night host.
But this time, ABC's parent, The Walt Disney Company, wasted no time
taking the host off the air.
Today,
America faces one its biggest threats to free speech. Donald Trump
began his presidency with shakedowns of law firms and universities.
Foreign college students were abducted and imprisoned for their views on
the Israel-Gaza war. Now the administration is exploiting Charlie Kirk’s horrific assassination to suppress the speech of their critics broadly.
Vice President J.D. Vance guest-hosted
Kirk’s podcast after the murder and exhorted his listeners: “When you
see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call
their employer.” I find celebrating murder to be detestable as well.
Still, ugliness is not illegal, and a government official should not be
trying to ruin the livelihoods of people who express detestable
opinions. (You know who once agreed with that sentiment? Vance, who
defended a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee who made
racist comments on social media: “I obviously disagree with some of
[his] posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a
kid’s life.”)
Then
Kimmel said in a monologue, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with
the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered
Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything
they can to score political points from it.” The comment was an aside
ahead of Kimmel showing a series of clips of Trump changing the subject of Kirk’s murder to a new White House ballroom under construction.
And
yet, Kimmel’s stray comment prompted Federal Communications Commission
Chair Brendan Carr to threaten ABC to publicly take Kimmel off the air.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on a right-wing
podcast. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take
actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC
ahead.” After ABC speedily obliged, Carr declared on Fox News, “We at
the FCC are going to force the public interest obligation. There are
broadcasters out there that don’t like it; they can turn in their
license in to the FCC.”
Trump backed Carr to the hilt, crowing on his social media site about the Kimmel suspension. But in case anyone thought Kimmel was being punished for saying unfounded things about Kirk’s assassin, Trump clarified matters Thursday on Air Force One:
“I
have read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me again,
97 percent negative, and yet I won and easily. I would think maybe
their license should be taken away ... Look, that’s something that
should be talked about for licensing, too, when you have a network and
you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump.”
This is literal authoritarian behavior in utter contempt of the Constitution and the First Amendment.
Every
conservative and libertarian who complained about “cancel culture”
perpetrated by progressive social media users over the last decade, and
every comedian who complained that it was no longer safe to tell jokes,
should be enraged and terrified that the President of the United States
wants to ruin the careers and the businesses of those who dare to joke
about him.
As the intellectually honest conservative commentator, and co-host of our podcast The DMZ, Matt Lewis recently wrote: “Cancel Culture Wasn’t Defeated—It Was Hijacked.”
Congressional Democrats responded today by calling for Carr’s resignation and proposing legislation to create a legal defense fund for people harassed by the government for their speech.
That’s
all fine, but it stops short of the root problem: The president is
using federal power to suppress free speech, violating the Constitution.
Yes, Carr should go but so should Trump.
Don’t ask nicely for resignation. Demand impeachment. Of Carr. Of Trump.
Of
course, Trump won’t be convicted. And yes, since Trump has been
impeached twice, calling for a third lacks drama. Nevertheless, the
political value of impeachment is its compelling logic: impeachment is
the lone and proper constitutional remedy for an unconstitutional
president and his unconstitutional apparatchiks.
Furthermore,
focusing impeachment on his actions to silence comedians who dare mock
him requires no complicated explanation. The potential impeachment rap
sheet on Trump is long, from family business crypto schemes to abuse of
pardon powers to the mistreatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. However,
prosecuting all those alleged offenses requires elaborate timelines and
making detailed arguments to prove they violate the Constitution or
statutes and are not merely untested uses of executive power.
The
case of Trump & Carr vs. Kimmel is simple. Trump’s FCC appointees
should not threaten TV stations over jokes. The prosecution rests.
—Bill Scher, Politics Editor |