Democrats on Capitol Hill Thursday sounded the alarm that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on critics like Jimmy Kimmel is the beginning of despotic behavior. But they have few resources to combat it.
House and Senate members expressed their alarm after ABC announced Wednesday night that it would suspend Kimmel indefinitely. Kimmel had come under fire for a monologue earlier in the week in which he spoke about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and mockingly claimed the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize” his alleged killer as “anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
While the alleged killer’s family is MAGA-sympathetic, the suspect himself railed against that ideology and Kirk, according to authorities.
“Trump is making it 100-percent clear that he is going to ramp up his efforts to use the power of the federal government to harass and punish his critics, not because they're supporters of political violence — they are not — but because they have the audacity to openly oppose his policies,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters.
“This is a standard format for every budding despot.”
Murphy led a coterie of congressional Democrats from the House and Senate introduced legislation that they say would deter government officials to retaliate against critics.
But the Kimmel suspension is part of a larger effort by Republicans and conservatives trying to get people fired. Republican members of Congress and members of the Trump administration have sought to have employees who criticized Kirk fired from their jobs in the wake of the Turning Point USA’s killing.
Trump for his part praised the suspension of Kimmel, saying “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.”
Rep. Mark Pocan (R-Wisc.) told The Independent that the he sees the efforts as reminiscent of another Wisconsinite: the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who in the 1950’s launched an inquisition to root out supposed Communists he claimed were infiltrating all walks of American life.
“The scary part for many of my constituents who talk about this issue is they see too many comparisons in history where people take advantage of a situation as a catalyst for something else that they have likely planned for a while to do,” Pocan said.
Republicans have long billed themselves as the party of “free speech” and Elon Musk claimed he purchased Twitter, now known as X, to “legalize comedy.” But Republicans have shown a desire to punish anyone who they believe did not properly honor the death of the conservative activist Kirk after he was assassinated at a public outdoor event in Orem, Utah at Utah Valley University last week.
“The president and his lap dogs here in the United States Congress, the vice president, the FCC chair, the attorney general, secretary of state, and congressional Republicans are implementing a dangerous agenda to punish their opposition,” Rep. Maxwell Frost said at the press conference. “Fascism is not on the way, it is here.”
Republicans are not only going after private employees; they are targeting their fellow Democratic colleagues in Congress. On Wednesday, all but four Republicans voted on a resolution by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and strip her of her committees.
Republicans targeted Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad,” after an interview she did with Zeteo where she criticized Kirk’s past rhetoric while also calling his assassination “mortifying.” Some Democrats saw the attack as racialized, particularly after Mace said that Omar, who emigrated to the U.S. from Somalia, should be deported.
“Meanwhile, we continue to have Republicans try to censure Black Caucus members, you know, as well as members who are speaking truth to power,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) told The Independent.
But Democrats have few tools the combat the rising tide. They do not control the House, Senate or the White House. In addition, many companies have acquiesced to the Trump administration’s demands.
“These corporations are so greedy that they are willing to do anything and everything in order to make as much money as possible, including being lieutenants in Donald Trump's effort to try to control political speech,” Murphy told The Independent at the press conference.
“So this is a big job, because we have to be speaking to our Republican colleagues to get them to do the right thing,” Murphy added. “We've got to be talking to the public, but we have to be talking to the corporate community as well.”
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