FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to take away ABC’s broadcasting license in response to a Jimmy Kimmel joke about suspected Charlie Kirk shooter Tyler Robinson.
In an interview with right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson, Carr claimed Kimmel intentionally spread misinformation about the Robinson by playing into a “narrative” that Robinson was a “MAGA or Republican motivated person.”
“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 said.
Johnson posted the Kimmel clip that gravely offended him to X multiple times on Wednesday, claiming that Kimmel is “explicitly stating that MAGA killed Charlie Kirk and is victim blaming the assassination on Charlie’s movement. It’s definitionally evil and a malicious lie.”
However, the clip in question, which comes from Monday night’s monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, does not feature Kimmel “explicitly” characterizing Robinson as MAGA or Republican.
Kimmel actually says, “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.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Kimmel for comment.
In the days following the Charlie Kirk shooting, Republicans politicians and pundits made intense efforts to tie the publicly available information about Kirk’s murder to the left, such as suggesting the memes etched onto the gun casings promoted “trans ideology.” Members of the Trump administration have used the killing as a pretext to threaten free speech crackdowns on left wing groups.
On Tuesday, prosecutors said Robinson texted his transitioning partner that he had “enough of [Charlie Kirk’s] hatred.”
Carr intimated that if Disney and ABC did not suspend Kimmel, the FCC would take away ABC’s license to broadcast.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” he said. “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.”
He added, “They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at free speech advocacy group FIRE, stated there is no legal grounds for the FCC to pursue action against Kimmel, ABC, or Disney.
“The FCC has no authority to control what a late night TV host can say, and the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to speculate on current events even if those speculations later turn out to be incorrect,” said Cohn.
“Subjecting broadcasters to regulatory liability when anyone on their network gets something wrong would turn the FCC into an arbiter of truth and cast an intolerable chill over the airwaves.”
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez voiced similar sentiments on X.
“An inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship or control,” she wrote.
“We must stand firm against every attempt to silence dissent, punish satirists and government critics, and erode individual liberty. To surrender our right to speak freely is to accept that those in power, not the people, will set the boundaries of debate that define a free society.”
Carr’s comments come at a time when television personalities have faced firings and backlash for any comments critical of Kirk or sympathetic to his alleged shooter.
Last Thursday, MSNBC fired commentator Matthew Dowd for bringing up Kirk’s "hateful words" in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Republicans are currently calling for ABC correspondent Matt Gutman to be fired for describing the alleged texts between Robinson and his partner as “touching.”
After this story was published, Carr posted a screenshot of the Daily Beast to X, writing, “Jimmy ‘Blackface’ Kimmel’s apparently outrageous conduct is the problem here, not the calling of it out.”
