WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has used threats, lawsuits and government pressure as he remakes the American media landscape, unleashing his long-standing grievances against an industry that has mocked, criticized and scorned him for years.
He's extracted multimillion-dollar settlements, forced companies into costly litigation and prompted changes to programming that he found objectionable.
Now Trump is escalating his campaign of censure and retaliation, invigorated by successful efforts to push ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for his commentary on conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning from Great Britain on Thursday, Trump said federal regulators should consider revoking broadcast licenses for networks that “give me only bad publicity.”
“All they do is hit Trump,” he said. “They’re licensed! They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat Party.”
Brendan Carr, Trump’s handpicked head of the Federal Communications Commission, issued a similar warning the previous day while criticizing Kimmel’s remarks about the political ideology of the suspected assassin.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
ABC suspended Kimmel hours later.
It was the kind of brute force response that Trump and his loyalists have routinely flexed since the Republican president returned to the White House with a vow to retaliate against critics and political opponents. Trump's reach has extended deep into the private sector, using the apparatus of the federal government to pressure companies to make changes that can reshape the public dialogue.
Critics fear crackdowns on free speechTrump has already reached settlements with ABC and CBS over their coverage. He has filed defamation lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Republicans in Congress stripped federal funding from NPR and PBS. At the FCC, Carr has used his influence to target diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to root out what he describes as liberal bias.
In the aftermath of Kirk's assassination, Trump has clamped down more firmly, with broader implications for the future of free speech protections that have been a bedrock of the American political system.
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said that “we will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Her words alarmed advocates who fear an elastic definition of the term could be used to criminalize dissent.
The First Amendment is widely viewed as protecting even the most disparaging remarks, and the Supreme Court said in an unanimous opinion last year that “government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”
Bondi later revised her comments to say she was focused on “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence.”
Todd Blanche, Bondi's deputy, suggested that protesters could have violated the law by yelling at Trump while he visited a restaurant near the White House.
"Is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, D.C., and accost him with vile words and vile anger?" Blanche said. He said authorities could investigate whether it's “part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States."
Politics and comedy collide on late-night showsThe latest saga with Kimmel began Monday night with the comedian's commentary about last week’s shooting of Kirk, which took place on a college campus in Utah.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. He also compared Trump's grief to “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
Trump allies said Kimmel was falsely suggesting that the shooter was right-wing. Authorities have not formally presented a motive for the killing, but evidence indicates that he held liberal beliefs. Gov. Spencer Cox, R-Utah, has said “there clearly was a leftist ideology,”
On Wednesday, Carr appeared on a podcast hosted by Benny Johnson, a conservative commentator, and accused Kimmel of the “sickest conduct possible." Carr said "you could make a strong argument that this is sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact.”
Carr placed the move against Kimmel in the broader context of Trump's efforts to undermine the power of legacy media companies.
“He smashed the facade that they get to control what we say, what we think, the narrative around events," Carr said. "And we’re seeing a lot of consequences from President Trump doing that.”
Reminding affiliates that their broadcast licenses come with an “obligation to operate in the public interest," Carr said “it's time for them to step up” and say Kimmel's content “isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities.”
Kimmel faces corporate backlashIt didn't take long for Nexstar Media Group, the country's biggest operator of television stations, to echo some of Carr's language.
“Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time," Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said in statement.
The controversy landed at a sensitive time for Nexstar, which needs FCC approval for its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna.
ABC soon announced that Kimmel would be taken off the air. It is unclear when or whether he will return. Kimmel has not commented publicly.
Later in the evening, the television company Sinclair said its stations would carry "a special in remembrance of Charlie Kirk” on Friday during Kimmel’s usual time slot. The company also asked Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and donate money to Turning Point USA, the conservative group that Kirk turned into a political powerhouse.
House Democratic leaders, in a statement, accused Carr of “bullying ABC” and “forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration,” and said a “war” on the First Amendment by Trump and the GOP “is blatantly inconsistent with American values.”
The news of Kimmel's suspension broke after midnight in Britain, where Trump was traveling for a state visit. But the president soon posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, to celebrate what he called “Great News for America.”
CBS had already announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show over the summer, and Trump said more dominoes should fall, calling for the cancellation of shows by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.
“Do it NBC!!!" he wrote.
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This story corrects the spelling of Nexstar.
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