HOUSTON – Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will return to ABC on Tuesday night, but not without sparking a heated debate among top Republicans about free speech and the Federal Communications Commission.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened last week to pull ABC’s license to broadcast after Kimmel made comments about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Carr made the remarks during an appearance on conservative host Benny Johnson’s podcast.
“Frankly when you see stuff like this, I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “You know the FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at. And again we may ultimately be called to be a judge on that.”
That threat drew pushback from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who said Carr’s words went too far.
“I like Brendan Carr. He’s a good guy. He is the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him. But what he said there is dangerous as hell,” Cruz said on his own podcast.
Cruz went on to compare the FCC’s approach to that of organized crime.
“And I gotta say, he threatens it, he says, ‘We could do this the easy way, but we could pull this the hard way,’” Cruz said. “I gotta 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.’”
Other Republicans echoed that criticism, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
“Absolutely inappropriate. Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this,” Paul said Sunday morning on ‘Meet The Press.’
Cruz’s concern, he said, is that pulling ABC’s license could ultimately silence conservatives as well.
That argument resonated with Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel, who said she strongly disagreed with Kimmel’s comments but defended his right to free speech.
“The FCC coming in, unless they can show and support that there was a direct violation of the law, then we’ve got to protect our free speech,” Siegel said. “Even if it’s free speech that I personally don’t agree with, and I don’t agree with Jimmy Kimmel on a lot of things.”
The clash underscores how the FCC’s authority over broadcast licenses ties directly into free speech protections — from national television down to city council and commissioners court meetings.