Fox News host and former congressman Harold Ford Jr. pulled no punches this week in blasting the Trump administration for putting its fingers on the scale regarding the suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
“If you make your living in this world through words—written word, the said word, the spoken word—today or last night might cause you to think differently about where we are,” Ford began, referring to the free speech crackdown following Charlie Kirk’s horrific killing. Kimmel was suspended after Trump’s FCC chairman threatened ABC over a recent monologue from Kimmel on Kirk’s alleged shooter.
“I watched the president today, and I give the president the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things. He was on Air Force One coming back from a very successful trip to London,” Ford said, adding:
He says, “They’re 97% against. They give me only bad press.” He was talking about the broadcast news. “People get public licenses. They’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It would be up to Brendan Carr.”
Now, if you didn’t tell me who said that, I would never think that quote was an American president—Democrat, Republican, whatever.
“I would think that sounds like something Putin would say. He took one of our own. Thank God we got him out, Evan. I would think it’s something Orbán would say in Hungary. I would think it’d be something that the North Korea guy would say,” Ford argued, making clear he found Trump’s comments to be authoritarian in nature. He added:
Number two: is SNL next? The president, in his quote last night, said that NBC ought to be on notice as well. And Saturday Night Live has done some of the great skits. I love that first part of it where they take on the political news of the day. I remember how much they took on Clinton. I was in Congress at the time. I had to think Clinton was probably upset. I laughed about some of the things. Some of the things I didn’t laugh about, but it was funny. They took on H.W. Bush. There were so many—they took on Ross Perot when he was running, they took on W, they took on Clinton.
“They also got rid of Shane Gillis, which means they made a decision about people they didn’t want on the show,” interjected Greg Gutfeld.
“So Greg, I’d say this to you, brother: if there’s a Democrat that gets elected and he or she decides to come after Greg Gutfeld, I will defend you as much as I’m defending this,” Ford said, adding:
I just think this is—as much as we disagree with what he said, some of it was not funny what Jimmy Kimmel said. But there were so many aspects of this that we’re not talking about: the company Nexstar, which is a great company, they’re in the middle of trying to acquire a company, and the person who’s going to make the decision about whether or not they can acquire the entity is the FCC. And Mr. Carr made—did not run away from that point last night on television on our great Sean Hannity show. He was quoted last night and said, “We can do this the hard way or the easy way.” Again, I would think this was a foreign leader saying this, not the United States.
So some of this humor I don’t like, and I don’t laugh at some of the stuff at night. But I’m just not convinced that the state should be deciding free press. And more importantly, when Mr. President—when President Trump said “he has no talent, he should be off”—I didn’t realize that the person that would be deciding whether or not talent should be on television would be the president of the United States.
There’s no doubt people get suspended for things that they say or that they don’t say or the way they say it in networks. And for that matter, companies have every right to do that. But I would only say to Mr. Carr, who said that these broadcast licenses—that these people have to act in the public interest—and he said they have every right to go get a podcast or go online… Think about this: on most broadcast shows, news shows, the local licenses, they can’t have a show for 30 minutes on how to build a Molotov cocktail. You know why? Because it’s not in the public interest. They can’t tell you how to build a nuclear bomb. You know why? It’s not in the public interest. But you can do it here.
Mr. Carr, spend some of your time trying to figure out how we regulate these people, how we regulate the radicalization and all of this stuff online that’s pummeling our kids and pummeling our society as much as you are this.
The courts—you’re right, Emily—will make the determination here, but I got to tell you, I’m a little alarmed today because I can’t believe we’re going to allow the government to tell us what’s funny, what’s not, and what’s permissible.
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