FCC Chair Threatens ABC Over Jimmy Kimmel Comments

Update: ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Off the Air Indefinitely After FCC Chair’s Threats

Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, is threatening action against Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian and late-night talk show host, his network ABC and parent company Disney over remarks he made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said in an interview released Wednesday with right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Spokespersons for ABC and Kimmel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Carr’s threat came after Kimmel insinuated on his program Monday that Kirk’s shooter was a conservative. Carr said the comments amounted to Kimmel being part of a concerted effort to lie to the American people about the nature of Kirk’s death.

“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,” Kimmel said.

No motive for the shooting has been determined, and there is no consensus about the politics of alleged shooter Tyler Robinson, although Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said “there clearly was a leftist ideology.” According to reports, Robinson was registered as unaffiliated in his home state of Utah.

Carr’s comments were not the first time that the Trump administration has threatened to go after broadcast media organizations through the FCC, which controls the licensure networks need to broadcast.

Last month, President Donald Trump called for the FCC to pull licenses for ABC and NBC for what he perceived to be negative coverage of him.

Carr has not done so yet. But he has demonstrated a willingness to use the FCC’s regulatory authority to advance the Trump administration’s agenda. He opened investigations into NPR and PBS months before the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was defunded. Carr accused CBS of “news distortion” for the way the network chose to air its interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and reopened an investigation into the network.

“The FCC could make a strong argument that this is sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact, a very important matter,” Carr told Johnson of Kimmel’s statement.

Carr’s comments also come at a time when the Trump administration is increasingly critical of comments it views as inflammatory, particularly as they relate to Kirk’s death. Free speech experts told NOTUS that the crackdown on free speech after Kirk’s death has been alarming.

On Tuesday, Carr himself affirmed the expansiveness of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.

“I think you can draw a pretty clear line, and the Supreme Court has done this for decades, that our First Amendment, our free speech tradition, protects almost all speech,” Carr told Politico at a summit Tuesday.