If comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s abrupt dismissal did not faze you enough, Donald Trump‘s latest statement listing his next targets should ring in your ears like a final alarm.
Debates have begun everywhere about Trump’s misuse of federal power for personal gain after the news of ABC’s firing of Kimmel over an arguably distasteful comment about him. While the heat of his dismissal still hasn’t died down, the President already announced his next batch of victims—and it’s not just individual reporters this time.
While flying back home on Air Force One after his two-day visit to the United Kingdom, Trump spoke to reporters and praised the FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, for getting Jimmy Kimmel’s show suspended. “I think Brendan Carr is doing a great job,” he said, while calling the show’s cancellation “Great News for America” in a recent social media post:
“The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible,” he wrote.
However, Trump doesn’t plan on stopping here. He told reporters aboard Air Force One that he will cancel licenses for any media networks that air content against him. According to him, “97 percent” of the networks are against him, and “they’re not allowed to do that.
“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something—when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.” (via The Daily Beast)
This means that any non-Trump-compliant local station, whose network channels air content criticizing Trump and his administration, is directly threatened with cancellation of its FCC licence. Now, one might think that the networks that we watch, including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, etc., are off the hook since they do not hold individual licenses, but all of them are affiliated with local FCC-licensed stations and thus stand in danger.
In his earlier post celebrating his unconstitutional display of power over Kimmel, Trump also subtly warned NBC News to part ways with their late-night hosts, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, calling them “two total losers.” These open threats by the man holding the highest federal office are a direct war on the future of the free press in the country.
It’s not about Kimmel, Fallon, or any other reporter anymore, but about whether the First Amendment can survive Trump’s authoritarianism.
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