Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
As you’ve probably heard, ABC suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show under pressure from the Trump administration. The ostensible reason for this is that Kimmel supposedly spread disinformation about Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. But then President Trump offered his own comments on what happened, and somehow Trump made the whole thing look even more corrupt and even more like a flagrant abuse of power. Trump confirmed openly that this whole thing is really all about how the networks cover him. There’s lots to discuss here. How Trump is increasingly emboldened to consolidate authoritarian power right out in the open, why his willing accomplices are essential to his whole project, and what Democrats can do to fight back. So we’re talking about all of it with Jennifer Rubin, editor in chief of The Contrarian, who has a new piece taking stock of Trump’s effort to move us toward a police state. Jen, good to have you on.
Jennifer Rubin: It’s great to be here, Greg.
Sargent: So ABC suspended Kimmel’s show after Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, went on a right-wing podcast and essentially threatened retribution. He threatened to revoke the licenses of affiliates of ABC and urged ABC and Disney to take action on Kimmel. This was supposedly because Kimmel had suggested Kirk’s assassin was MAGA, which may not be right. Jen, even if Kimmel was wrong on that narrow fact, this is still speech. Your reaction to what we just saw?
Rubin: Exactly. Fox News lies every day, deliberately, continually, and no one takes them off the air. Unless they defame someone, which Kimmel clearly didn’t do, they are legally protected. Apparently, Pam Bondi, as we heard the other day, doesn’t understand that, quote, “hate speech is constitutionally protected.” We have a deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who thinks that demonstrations and other First Amendment activity can be the subject of a RICO suit. These people resist being labeled as fascists, but what else do you call this? This is what fascists do. They oppress and repress opponents’ speech, and in particular, the reflective desire to silence comedians is really a bit too on the nose.
Dictators, of course, hate comedians who mock them and who show them to be fools. And so Trump striking out because of what a comedian said in a very innocuous way is just par for the course. But you know what? He says it out loud. They’re not hiding it. People should and must sue. We have not only seen this with ABC, but of course we’ve seen this in a prior ABC episode, when in essence they coughed up $15 million to Donald Trump because he had filed a bogus lawsuit against them. The same with CBS with an even more bogus lawsuit. So unfortunately, these big media empires have brought some of this on themselves by appeasing Trump. When you appease a dictator, you get more extortion. And they didn’t draw the line then. And you wonder when they’re gonna draw the line now.
newrepublic.com
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www.reuters.com
www.politico.eu
www.yahoo.com
ourworldindata.org
theconversation.com
www.justsecurity.org
