Brendan Carr defended free speech -- until he went after Jimmy Kimmel

Brendan Carr defended free speech — until he went after Jimmy Kimmel
What happened to the FCC chairman is happening to America

By Austin Sarat
Published September 19, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) The tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk is still reverberating across America. On Sept. 17, Jimmy Kimmel, the host of ABC’s late-night talk show, became the latest casualty in our post-Kirk world.

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As disturbing as Trump’s reaction was, what Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr said before ABC announced Kimmel’s suspension was even worse, and underscored the administration’s convoluted view of free speech. The late-night host’s comments, Carr said, were “the sickest conduct possible.”

Carr didn’t stop there, nor did he honor America’s free speech tradition, which says that we should respond to speech we find offensive with more speech. Instead he threatened to deploy the power of the federal government against Disney, ABC’s parent company, if it didn’t do something about Kimmel.

“This,” Carr suggested, “is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney.” Then, in a truly chilling remark, he added, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

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The harm from Carr’s threat and the network’s acquiescence is enormous.

No one knows this better than Carr. Prior to assuming his current role as Trump’s go-to guy for intimidating the media, he was a fierce defender of free speech and critic of regulatory overreach by the FCC. “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like?” he posted on Twitter in 2019. “Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’” .....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/19/brendan-carr-defended-free-speech-until-he-went-after-jimmy-kimmel/