In pressuring ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s show, the Trump Administration has made a major mistake. Its actions violate the spirit if not the letter of the First Amendment which Charlie Kirk so ardently defended and used to present his own views while respecting the rights of others to disagree with him in open debate. Moreover, it strengthened a precedent by which Democrats may some day harass Republican and conservative broadcasters. To better honor Charlie Kirk as well as to preserve the best interests of conservatism, the Trump administration should withdraw its threats to broadcasters, ABC should reinstate Jimmy Kimmel, Kimmel’s critics should be allowed to critique as vigorously as they choose his noxious ideas on the Charlie Kirk assassination, and Kimmel himself should be allowed to defend his views, if he can. That’s what freedom of speech is all about.
It should be easy to understand the profound satisfaction which President Trump and his MAGA followers must feel in driving Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Hillary Clinton said they were deplorable. President Biden called them “garbage.” And before the rise of Donald Trump, Democrats in general were calling Republicans—even Mitt Romney and John McCain—racist and sexist. Parents who wanted to know more about what their kids were being taught in schools were “domestic terrorists” who had no right to question what school boards mandated for their children. Whoever questioned the propriety of allowing boys to define themselves as girls, play in girls’ sports, or go into girls’ bathrooms were branded sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and every other phobic one could imagine. And there’s a long list of media personalities whom broadcasters, under pressure from the left, have moved to cancel to various degrees, including Roseanne Barr, Tucker Carlson, J. K. Rowling, Megyn Kelly, Hulk Hogan, and Tim Allen.
Jimmy Kimmel himself, a long-time critic of the right, helped stir up public anger—perhaps deliberately. The final comments that got him into trouble—the straws that broke the camel’s back, so to speak—were assertions that Tyler Robinson, the accused and alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk, was himself part of the “MAGA gang.” But by the time Kimmel had delivered himself of that inanity, it had become established that Robinson, although raised in a conservative Republican family, had a male roommate/lover who was identifying as both a female and a “furry.” Robinson said Kirk was a homophobic and transphobic hate monger who needed to be silenced—permanently.
Some defenders of ABC’s sacking of Kimmel have argued that ABC was well within its right to remove him and may have done so anyway because his show allegedly was becoming increasingly unprofitable. After all, the First Amendment limits the power of the government to control free speech, but not the power of private corporations to fire employees who say things their corporate bosses dislike, or otherwise lose their bosses’ money. Thus, ESPN, which had hired conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh to also offer sports commentary, had a perfect right to fire him after he claimed that a starting quarterback had gotten his position not because he was good, but because he was Black. And a diet supplement company which had hired Whoopi Goldberg to be its television spokesperson likewise could dismiss her for making pornographic jokes comparing President George W. Bush with a certain female anatomical feature. Again—no free speech issue here.
But while no federal regulator gave—or could have given—a legally binding order to ABC to get rid of Kimmel, Trump’s Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, did threaten ABC and other broadcasters with closer scrutiny of license renewal applications should they continue to broadcast anti-Trump and anti-MAGA material. This makes the cancellation of Kimmel different from those of Roseanne Barr and others: Their employers may have felt pressured by leftist opinion to cancel them, yet they weren’t pressured by the government itself. But the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel following direct pressure from the government seems to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment, and dishonors the memory of Charlie Kirk.
To better honor Charlie Kirk’s memory, Trump, Carr, and the FCC should rescind their threats against the broadcast media and create an environment wherein Kimmel and other commentators are free to offer whatever comments on whatever issues they choose, on condition that their critics have the same right to critique and refute, if possible, the views of Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and other left-leaning commentators. And of course, right-leaning commentators must likewise have the right to broadcast their own views, on condition that they too may be challenged, debated, and possibly refuted by left-leaning as well.
And if loyalty to Charlie Kirk’s memory and to the First Amendment are not sufficient reasons for Trump and Barr to back off on their intimidation campaign, they should be reminded that what goes around, comes around. To use the government to suppress speech on the left sets and strengthens a precedent for Democrats to someday use the government to suppress speech on the right. Perhaps nobody has identified or articulated this danger better than Senator Ted Cruz, who’s compared Trump’s FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, to a “mob boss” and a “mafioso” advocating an “unbelievably dangerous” policy of censorship. Cruz said, “If the government goes in the business of saying ‘we don’t like what you, the media, have said, were going to ban you from the airwaves’…that will end up bad for conservatives.” Moreover, “It might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel. But when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”
To protect Jimmy Kimmel and his right to express his views, however noxious they may be, is to protect the rights of everyone, whether of the left, the right, or the center, to more freely participate in the never-ending debate over what’s best for America.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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