Trump Yet Again Pushes FCC to Ignore the First Amendment and Punish ABC for Not Firing Jimmy Kimmel

Donald Trump already tried to fire Jimmy Kimmel once for making fun of him. Now he’s doing it again, sending FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to threaten ABC’s broadcast licenses as punishment for the network allowing Kimmel to perform one of a comedian’s most basic functions: making fun of the president.

CNN reports:

President Donald Trump says ABC had “better” fire Jimmy Kimmel soon, in his latest broadside against the network and its popular late-night comedian.

Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning, “When is ABC Fake News Network firing seriously unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, who incompetently presides over one of the Lowest Rated shows on Television? People are angry. It better be soon!!!”

ABC’s parent company Disney has shown no sign of wavering despite Trump’s pressure and the FCC’s almost unprecedented challenge to ABC’s station licenses. …

Trump has railed against Kimmel for years, but this latest controversy began last week when Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow.”…

Then, on Tuesday, the Trump-aligned FCC ordered Disney into an early renewal process for its eight ABC station licenses—a move widely seen as a form of government punishment.

The fact that this is described as almost unprecedented reveals one of the problems that will eventually need to be fixed. The FCC has excessive discretion over broadcast licensing that has long allowed it to subject broadcasters to arbitrary power. This has a ripe potential for abuse, which Trump and Carr are taking full advantage of.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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