The Monumental Cowardice of Cancelling Jimmy Kimmel

Disney thinks it made a smart, savvy move by canning the late-night host. Really it just opened itself up to further extortion.

Credit: ABC

It took ABC just hours to capitulate to an overt threat from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to revoke the network’s license in response to comments from Jimmy Kimmel about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. That’s how far down the authoritarian rabbit hole we’ve traveled in just the first year of Trump’s presidency: a president silencing a comedian he dislikes in a single afternoon, and one of the world’s biggest corporations rushing to do his bidding.

Here’s what happened: Kimmel talked about MAGA’s response to the Kirk shooting in a way that enraged Trump. In response, Carr went on a right-wing podcast (where else would federal policy be made?) to say that ABC has “a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest … We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” In essence, nice broadcast license you’ve got there; be a shame if something happened to it.

ABC and its parent company Disney got the message. Within hours, they announced that Kimmel’s show would be indefinitely suspended. This follows the similar cancellation of Stephen Colbert, another comedian Trump detests, earlier this year, as part of Paramount’s desperate bid to have its Skydance merger approved. This is a playbook now: If you want Trump’s federal government to be nice to you, you have to play ball and make a sacrifice at the MAGA altar.

All of this has less to do with Kimmel and more to do with what it says about how much closer we’ve come to full-blown authoritarianism since Trump retook office. We can object to Kimmel’s comments, or think them insensitive, or debate their factual accuracy. Ultimately, though, that’s all beside the point. The point is that we have an aspiring autocrat in office nakedly wielding government power to punish and silence the speech of those whom he dislikes. And now, thanks to Disney, we have yet another willing corporate handmaiden to this autocratic power-play.

It’s worth noting that the silencing of Kimmel is being loudly cheered on by the same people who have spent years decrying the weaponization of government and the stifling of free speech. Trump, Vance, and their media enablers have long lamented the left’s perceived intolerance for various forms of speech, and made a cause célèbre out of attacking platforms that moderate content in ways they deem unfair. At the same time, they spent four years attacking the last Democratic administration with specious allegations that it was weaponizing the levers of government against its political opponents.

Fast-forward to now: Trump is actually stifling free speech, weaponizing government power to directly silence a political opponent. The contrast between MAGA’s professed ideals and what it’s doing with its power right now couldn’t be starker. And this is just the beginning.

It’s instructive to take stock of how different this all is from Trump’s response to other recent bouts of political violence. After two Democratic Minnesota lawmakers were brutally murdered in June, Trump offered a tepid response. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a stalwart Trump ally, made fun of the dead in a tweet, which he refused to take down for days. No effort was made to punish, shame, or silence the senator for his cruelty for the lost and the grieving. Lee’s speech, it would appear, wasn’t the kind of thing Trump thought was worth getting worked up over.

If the government is going after people for false or insensitive speech surrounding the Kirk shooting, it has no shortage of targets in its own backyard. The MAGA-verse is currently alight with conspiracy theories about the shooter’s motives, network, funding, you name it. Leading MAGA influencers like Candace Owens are actively alleging that the shooting was an Israeli plot, which is obviously false. Will the federal government be bringing its considerable power to bear to ensure that proponents of these conspiracy theories are properly punished? Obviously not. Because this isn’t about the truth, it’s about punishing Trump’s political enemies.

We have unfortunate news for Disney, the latest corporate coward to offer Trump the demanded pound of flesh: This won’t work. Other entities—from law firms, to universities, to other media companies—have attempted to pay off or otherwise appease the president in hopes that he’ll leave them alone. It hasn’t worked. Trump and his cronies simply pocket the proceeds and up the ante. We saw this with the law firms that pledged pro bono services, the universities that gave the government de facto control over their curricula, and we’re going to see it with Disney too, in time.

Caving will only get you so far. When it comes to MAGA, everything is never enough. Trump will always want more, require more, demand more. When all the Jimmy Kimmels and Stephen Colberts are gone, there will always be more scapegoats to be hounded out of the building, more wrongthink to be purged before the leader decides he’s satisfied. Trump is a classic bully, and he has a nose for weakness. Those who cave to his demands are only opening themselves up to future, more onerous demands. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

So why not fight? Right now, there are still law firms, colleges, media companies, and ordinary people around the country who are actively saying no, and doing everything in their power to stop the daily corruption and anti-democratic extremism we’re seeing from this administration. They’ve succeeded in preventing some of Trump’s worst abuses in the courts, preserving a measure of free inquiry and public debate, and calling attention to all the ways Trump’s policies are hurting Americans and shredding our constitutional inheritance. There are still Americans who are being brave.

Choose to be one of them.

Sarah Matthews is an Advisory Board Member and Spokesperson for Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.