‘Dangerous as Hell’: Ted Cruz Torches Trump FCC Chair Brendan Carr Over Jimmy Kimmel Threat
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission chairman, on his podcast Thursday, even going so far as to argue that his rhetoric is “dangerous as hell.”
On Wednesday, Carr suggested that Jimmy Kimmel and his employer, ABC, could face consequences for a Monday evening rant in which the comic falsely suggested that Tyler Robinson, the man who murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk last week, was a “one of” the “MAGA gang.”
“Look, 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,” said Carr.
That evening, media giant Nexstar — which is seeking FCC approval of a merger — announced that its stations wouldn’t air Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future,” and in short order, ABC suspended the program indefinitely.
Cruz began his show by remarking that it’s a “fantastic thing” that Kimmel had been suspended and observing that the late night host had been “putting out garbage for a long, long time.” He sounded a different note, however, about Carr’s comments.
After playing a clip of Carr weighing in on the topic, Cruz made his thoughts abundantly clear, declaring: “No, no, no, no, no.”
“Look, I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy,” continued the conservative senator. “But what he said there is dangerous as hell. ”
He went on to explain:
So the Federal Communication Commission is in charge of granting broadcast licenses. So ABC, NBC, CBS, they have licenses from the FCC. It is true that under statute, they are required to be in the public interest. What he is saying is Jimmy Kimmel was lying. That’s true. He was lying. And his lying to the American people is not in the public interest. And so he threatens explicitly: we’re going to cancel ABC’s license. We’re going to take them off the air so ABC cannot broadcast anymore. And I got to say, he threatens it. He says, “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.” And I got to say, that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, “Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”
And I got to say, look, I understand. Jimmy Kimmel has mocked me so many times, I cannot count. The corporate media, they are dishonest, they are liars, I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired. But let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying, “We don’t like what you, the media, have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,” that will end up bad for conservatives. It reminds me of, you and I are both fans of Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien. It reminds me of like the ring of power, and it is so attractive. It’s sort of like conservatives are saying, “Wait, wait. If we have government, we have power. We can ban the media!”
Let me tell you what will happen. Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again, wins the White House, and the next Democrat FCC? They will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly, and that is dangerous. And by the way, in the Biden administration, they tried to go after and revoke Fox’s license because they didn’t like, and they say everything they say on Fox is hate speech, I’m sure they say everything you and I say is hate speech, it’s misinformation. They’ve defined anything counter to the leftist narrative as misinformation.
Now, we just talked about Jimmy Kimmel was lying. But you know what? It’s interesting, Brendan said, “Well, gosh, they they slandered they slandered Charlie Kirk and his family.” You know what? If they slandered him, there’s already a remedy. There’s a remedy of defamation. ABC could be sued, and by the way, you get a defamation lawsuit, you could pay millions of dollars. Let that process play out. I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, “We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.” And 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. And so again, I like Brennan Carr, but we should not be in this business. We should denounce it. It’s fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable, It was disgraceful, and he should be off air, but we shouldn’t be threatening government power to force him off air. That’s a real mistake.
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