How Jimmy Kimmel and Disney Learned to Fight Trump - Newsweek

The battle of comedians, broadcasters and federal regulators has once again reached the courtroom and the nation’s airwaves, reigniting a conflict that cuts to the heart of First Amendment issues in the U.S.

September 17 will mark one year since Brendan Carr, President Donald Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), urged media companies and broadcasters to drop comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show after the late-night host said the “MAGA gang” was attempting to “score political points” from the death of Charlie Kirk. Kimmel joked about Trump’s apparently insincere reaction to the death of the 31-year-old conservative activist, comparing it to “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

That was enough to upset Carr, who called Kimmel's comments "some of the sickest conduct possible" and warned of "a path forward for suspension over this." He added that it was a “very serious issue” for ABC parent Disney and told the company that "we can do this the easy way or the hard way."

ABC suspended Kimmel’s show after several affiliates said they would be indefinitely pre-empting Jimmy Kimmel Live. And while it lasted only six days—during which cancellations of Disney+ reportedly soared—the sequence of events raised concerns about free speech and censorship in the U.S. under Trump.

Newsweek has contacted both the FCC and Disney via email for comment.

“The dispute extends back longer than the past year,” said Bob Corn-Revere, a longtime First Amendment litigator and chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), who told Newsweek that the current cases resemble Trump’s first-term calls to revoke network licenses, but which are now more concerning given that Carr appears “fully committed to doing the president's bidding.”

A year on, Kimmel says he is once again in the administration’s crosshairs. This week, he told his audience that an interview with the Democrat state Representative James Talarico—running for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas in this year’s midterm elections—would air on YouTube rather than television due to pressure from the FCC and concerns over the enforcement of its new rules.

It comes after the agency said in January that TV talk shows were no longer exempt from the regulations requiring that “equal time” be given to both candidates in a political contest.

“His [Trump's] FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like," Kimmel said, adding that the decision was also made to spare ABC’s affiliates any difficulty from the FCC and Carr.

The White House told the BBC that this was “play acting” from the comedian and that Carr had “not threatened him regarding interviewing James Talarico,” but the events of last September mean many are viewing this as the FCC again jawboning private companies over their output.

“Broadcasters have a right to carry this type of content without fear of interference from the FCC, or at least they did until Brendan Carr became the chair of the agency,” Christopher Terry, a fellow of journalism, law and policy at the University of Minnesota, told Newsweek.

“Moving the Kimmel interview with James Talarico is a clear reflection of how regulatory pressure is forcing broadcasters to alter their editorial choices—something that both the Communications Act and First Amendment prohibit,” Corn-Revere said. “The fact that the interview can be presented on YouTube merely shows that the antiquated rules on political broadcasting have outlived their usefulness.”

Anna Gomez, the sole Democratic commissioner at the FCC, accused the agency of “intimidation” and said that it had “no lawful authority to threaten broadcast licenses over guest bookings or editorial decisions.”

In a statement published Thursday, Gomez said that Disney’s ABC, “unlike other broadcasters who had quietly capitulated…has continued to fight this unlawful coercion in court,” referencing the lawsuit brought against the FCC last month.

In April, Carr launched an early license review for eight ABC stations—not officially due until between 2028 and 2031—over what he said were long-running concerns about discrimination at Disney. He insisted that it had nothing to do with Kimmel or the past friction between regulators and the company, but many—including Disney—saw it as retaliation.

"Government censorship is deeply un-American," Disney and ABC wrote in a lawsuit filed last month. “This case concerns the Administration’s sustained effort to do just that. Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.”

And the saga involving Kimmel appears central to their case—Carr’s “easy way or the hard way” remark last September was cited as evidence that the administration has “not been shy about openly coercing ABC into changing its programming.”

A year ago, Disney appeared to fold under pressure after one of its biggest names made what the president and his officials considered off-color remarks.

The company is now referencing that very same episode as it fights back in the courts, acknowledging—with the Talarico interview—that the same regulatory pressures continue to constrain its editorial decisions.

However, in once again bringing the issue into public eye, the FCC and its Trump-appointed chair may have provided ammunition to those like Disney, tasked with demonstrating that they are targets of a long-running campaign of pressure.

“Episodes like this only strengthen [Disney’s] case,” Gomez said on Thursday.

Corn-Revere added: “This latest episode merely provides more evidence for ABC's court case against the FCC. And if the court sides with the network—as I think it should—then Chairman Carr's latest gambit will have blown up in his face and undermined all the efforts to pressure broadcasters.”

Kimmel returned on Tuesday following his two-month summer break and used the opening monologue to reflect on his 4,000th show and the situation in which it now finds itself.

"There are those who said we would never last this long,” he said. “There are even those who used the regulatory might of the FCC to unconstitutionally try to make sure we didn't last this long. But we did it the hard way, Brendan, and we are still here."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Dave Siminoff.