Vice President JD Vance, addressing Jimmy Kimmel‘s return to ABC, suggested that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr‘s warning to the network’s stations was merely “a joke.”
Answering a reporter’s question about the free speech implications that have been raised over the temporary sidelining of Kimmel, Vance said, “What people will say is, ‘Didn’t the FCC commissioner put a tweet out that said something bad?’
“Well, compare … the FCC commissioner making a joke on social media. What is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in to kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody off else off the air? Zero. What government pressure have we brought to bear to tell people that they’re not allowed to speak their mind? Zero. We believe in free speech in the Trump administration. We are fighting every single day to protect it. today, compare that to the Biden administration, where we found out just yesterday that conservatives on YouTube and on a number of social media platforms were being censored. Why? Because the Biden administration picked up the phone and said, ‘We want you to censor our political opponents.’ That is real government censorship, and it left the White House when Joe Biden left the White House.”
Carr’s comments actually were made on Benny Johnson’s podcast last week, albeit they spread across social media. Carr also sounded serious when he was asked about one of Kimmel’s remarks about MAGA’s efforts to define the motives of the suspect in the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
On the podcast, Carr said, “Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Carr also brought up the possible revocation of broadcast licenses. He said that “it’s time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, Listen, we’re going to preempt, we’re not going to run Kimmel anymore, and so you straighten this out because we, licensed broadcasters are running into 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.”
Hours later, Nexstar announced that it was pulling Kimmel from its ABC stations. Soon after, ABC announced that the show would be taken off the air indefinitely.
In the aftermath, Carr’s remarks have been criticized on the left and the right. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) compared it to the type of threat heard from a mafia boss.
ABC announced on Monday that Kimmel would return to the air. He addressed the situation in a lengthy monologue on Tuesday night. “Our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on TV,” the late-night host said.
Just before the show aired, President Donald Trump expressed anger over ABC’s decision to return Kimmel, and threatened again to go after ABC, this time claiming that the network was making illegal campaign contributions because of the late-night host’s humor. “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump wrote.
Carr this week attempted to clarify his remarks, while blaming Democrats for past efforts to pressure media outlets over news content.
Vance’s reference to Biden was over YouTube’s announcement that it would reinstate content creators it sidelined over Covid and election misinformation. Daniel F. Donovan, counsel for YouTube parent Alphabet, wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that Biden administration officials, concerned about misinformation, pressed the company to remove “non-violative user-generated content” related to the pandemic.
“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the company moderates content, and the company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds,” Donovan wrote.
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