Barack Obama Denounces ‘Dangerous’ Jimmy Kimmel Suspension: ‘Media Companies Need to Start Standing Up’ to Trump

Former President Barack Obama accused the Trump administration of taking “cancel culture” to “a new and dangerous level” in the wake of the news that ABC was suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show indefinitely after he misled his audience about the political allegiance of the man who shot conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week.

Hours after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr told Benny Johnson that “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead” on Wednesday, telecom giant Nexstar announced that it wouldn’t carry Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its stations. Shortly after that, ABC itself put Kimmel’s show on hold.

The decision has ignited much debate between those who insist that Kimmel is being punished for his poor job performance, and critics who allege that Carr’s comments amounted to a coercive violation of the First Amendment.

On Thursday, Obama weighed in on the matter by identifying himself as a member of the latter group.

“After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” submitted Obama while linking to a Vox article about the Kimmel news.

In a follow-up tweet, Obama wrote, “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”

In his second tweet, he shared a New York Times article about Karen Attiah, an erstwhile opinion columnist for The Washington Post who was fired over her reaction to Kirk’s death. There is no evidence that the federal government played a role in the ouster of Attiah, who misquoted Kirk after his death, falsely claiming that he once said, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.”

The Times article did not mention that Attiah’s erroneous quotation of Kirk, and instead ended by repeating Attiah’s assertion that her “only direct reference to Kirk was one post — his own words on record.”