Jimmy Kimmel‘s latest monologue is being strongly criticized by Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr.
Kimmel’s comments (below) about the Charlie Kirk shooting during Tuesday’s show went viral after he said suspected assassin Tyler Robinson was a MAGA Republican.
“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.
Carr was interviewed by YouTuber Benny Johnson on Wednesday (video also below), where he appeared to threaten ABC affiliate licenses over the comments, which he called “the sickest conduct possible.”
“[This] appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into the narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican-motivated person,” Carr said. “What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Johnson said he’d like to see an apology from Kimmel to Kirk and his family and asked Carr what other punitive steps the FCC might take.
“I think what you said strikes me as a very reasonable, minimal step that can be taken,” Carr said. “Calls for Kimmel to be fired — I think, you could certainly see a path forward for a suspension over this. You know, the FCC is going to have remedies.”
Carr then ran down some of the media earthquakes that have transpired under the second Trump administration, from Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show being canceled next year, to NPR and PBS being defunded, to CBS News taking steps to be more “fact based.”
“So I think you see some lashing out from people like Kimmel, who are frankly talentless and are looking for ways to get attention,” he said. “Their grip on the narrative is slipping. That doesn’t mean that it’s still important to hold the public interest standard … We have a rule on the book that interprets the public interest standard that says ‘news distortion’ is something that is prohibited … the FCC has stepped back from enforcing it … I think it’s past time these [affiliates] themselves push back on Comcast and this and say, ‘Listen, we’re not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we’re running the possibility of license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.’ So I think again, Disney needs to see some change here.” (Note: Comcast owns NBC Universal; Disney owns ABC).
ABC and Kimmel had no immediate comment.
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