Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) scolded Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr Wednesday about his role in the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night ABC show — but then let him get by with an answer that attacked Democrats and moved on.
In September, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was temporarily suspended by ABC after comments the comedian made about Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old charged with the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
“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,” said Kimmel on the Sept. 15 episode.
President Donald Trump and other Republicans lauded the suspension while Kimmel’s supporters denounced it as censorship, since it came in the aftermath of vociferous criticism from the president and comments from Carr about how his agency “can do this the easy way or the hard way” if companies don’t “find ways to change conduct and take action.”
Cruz was among the conservatives who blasted Carr’s comments, calling it “dangerous as hell” for the government to be “threatening” to force a television show off the air.
Later that same month, Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be returning, after “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” about comments that “were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”
Carr appeared at an oversight hearing for the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday and Cruz, the committee’s chairman, questioned him about Kimmel, framing it as a free speech issue.
“I think you would agree that the FCC’s public interest standard has been weaponized against conservatives in the past,” Cruz said to Carr, mentioning a few examples and asking Carr if he thought that was “wrong.”
Carr agreed, and added that those were times where the agency, “rather than follow FCC precedent, broke from it and did so in a weaponized way.”
Cruz continued, saying that there was another “area of agreement” between the two of them that “Jimmy Kimmel is angry, overtly partisan, and profoundly unfunny,” calling his remarks about Kirk “tasteless.”
“ABC and its affiliates would have been fully within their rights to fire him or simply to no longer air his program, that was their choice,” said Cruz. “But what government cannot do is force private entities to take actions that the government cannot take directly. Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills free speech.”
“Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion,” he continued, mentioning examples like past efforts by the Biden administration to get Big Tech to limit speech regarding Covid or elections.
“Mr. Chairman, my question is this: so long as there is a public interest standard, shouldn’t it be understood to encompass robust First Amendment protections to ensure that the FCC cannot use it to chill speech?” asked Cruz.
“Yes, Senator, I agree with you there, and I think the examples you laid out of weaponization during the Biden years are perfect examples,” replied Carr. “The Fox case you mentioned was a renewal for a broadcast TV license, and petitioners sought to have the FCC not renew it, based on content that aired on a separate cable channel. In the cable context, it’s entirely different, there’s no license, there’s no public interest standard, so first and foremost, we have to make sure the FCC’s hewing to precedent. Similarly, we saw Democrats in Congress write letters to cable companies pressuring them to drop Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax because they disagree with the political perspectives of those cable channels. And there again, it was cable. No broadcast license, no public interest standard. So the FCC has to write within the four corners of our precedents, to be consistent with the Communications Act and the First Amendment concerns as well.”
“All right, let’s shift to Spectrum,” said Cruz, referring to the Spectrum Act and not asking follow up questions about Kimmel.
Watch the video above via C-SPAN on YouTube.
