Will The Last Late-Night Comedian Not Fired By Trump Please Turn Out The Lights?

No, Jimmy Fallon doesn't count.

In a disturbing new front in the Trump administration’s growing war on free speech following Charlie Kirk’s murder, ABC silenced late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel yesterday, taking his talk show off the air indefinitely.

The move came after Brendan Carr, Donald Trump’s pet FCC chair, threatened to take action against the network’s affiliate stations, and after Nexstar, a company that owns 32 ABC affiliates, announced that it would preempt Kimmel’s show. Hey, big surprise! Nexstar is pursuing a $6.2 billion merger with another media company, Tegna, that can’t go forward without FCC approval.

What, you thought this had something to do with what Kimmel actually said? Don’t be silly. It’s about keeping Mad King Donald happy so his minions won’t block huge profits.

In his monologue Monday night, Kimmel made some pointed observations about how rightwing politicians have tried to use last week’s murder of Charlie Kirk for political gain. As you can see in the video below, Kimmel didn’t say anything bad about Kirk, but that wasn’t necessary for the Rightwing Outrage Machine to spin up and demand Kimmel be fired (or banished perhaps) for his outrageous slanders of the Holy Martyr.

We’ve cued up the video to the comments that endangered America, or at least the Nexstar merger; they followed a bit about Donald Trump’s weird insistence that the NFL needs to keep football more violent and head-trauma-y.

The joke that filled the MAGAs with incandescent rage was a pretty accurate observation about GOP politicians, mixed with what may have been an inaccurate characterization of the shooter, but honestly, we still don’t know his motives for sure. Hope you’re sitting down for this joke, which had the power to kill a TV show.

“We had 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. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

Kimmel then made fun of Trump’s comments to reporters Friday when he was asked how he’s doing after the loss of his great friend, Charlie Kirk. Trump didn’t waste any time talking about his martyred pal, because he was really excited about preliminary work already going on to build that monstrous ballroom next to the White House. Kimmel said Trump’s reaction was “not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish, OK?” He also compared Kash Patel’s investigation of the murder to “a kid who didn’t read the book, BSing his way through an oral report.”

But it was that libel of MAGA, and the not-quite claim that the shooter was himself a Trumper, that was intolerable, although as Jonathan Last notes at the Bulwark, Kimmel didn’t actually say the killer was a MAGA Chud, just that MAGA Chuds were frantic to say there was no possibility he was one of them. These fine distinctions do not matter in the fires of a holy war, of course, because the outcome had already been decreed: Kimmel had to go, because he lied, and if there’s anything Trumpworld can’t stand, it’s a liar. (And please, if you will, a moment of silence for all the devoured pets of Springfield, Ohio.)

Brendan Carr, speaking to podcaster Benny Johnson (a serial plagiarist, not that it matters), called on Wednesday morning for ABC affiliates to stop carrying Kimmel’s show, because it would be a real shame if they lost their broadcasting licenses, wouldn’t it? (Contrary to Trump’s frequent claims, TV networks don’t have licenses that can be revoked, though their affiliate stations do.) Carr explained,

“I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, ‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore, until you straighten this out because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.’”

We certainly can’t have comedians distorting the news, after all. Carr went on, essentially laying a large metaphorical revolver on the metaphorical table to make clear that this was a non-metaphorical offer ABC couldn’t refuse: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Rolling Stone reports (archive link if you need it) that Carr’s threat had the intended effect at the network:

In the hours leading up to the decision to pull Kimmel, two sources familiar with the matter say, senior executives at ABC, its owner Disney, and affiliates convened emergency meetings to figure out how to minimize the damage. Multiple execs felt that Kimmel had not actually said anything over the line, the two sources say, but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed.

“They were pissing themselves all day,” one ABC insider tells Rolling Stone.

Wow, were MAGA Chuds ever delighted by that!

ABC folded, Trump declared victory and said that next, NBC needs to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers for being enemies of the people, and people started digging though Brendan Carr’s old social media posts. After all, back in 2019, when then-FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC should take action against e-cigarettes for the sake of public health, Carr had been a shining advocate for free speech (for producers of carcinogens), tweeting,

Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not.

The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the “public interest.”

OK, but oral cancer and addiction to nicotine are harmless, while Jimmy Kimmel really did hurt America Monday.

Other sharp cookies found a more recent tweet, from 2022, in which Carr protested Twitter’s suspension of the Babylon Bee, pretending he agreed with Joe Biden one time. He did a cool two-tweet thread, even, although why he waited a day for the second one is a mystery.

Not that dipshit dictators and their flunkies care about hypocrisy or irony or anything; just one more thing we can laugh about as we’re on our way to the polls, or the camps, depending on what we do next.

Also, you know WHO ELSE banned comedians? Or had his goons do it for him? Yep, literally:

The end, of this article at least, but hopefully not of democracy.

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[NPR / Rolling Stone (archive link) / NBC News / Deadline]

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