Continuing attacks on media, Trump threatens ABC over Kimmel’s return
As part of his ongoing feud with some U.S. media companies, President Donald Trump threatened ABC and its parent company, Disney, after the network reinstated suspended talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on the air late Tuesday. Kimmel returned almost a week after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a Trump appointee, said the administration would try to remove the host “the easy way or the hard way” over comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,” Trump posted on Truth Social, a platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group. “He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this… Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers! Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad Ratings.”
Trump’s post alluded to his settlement of a defamation lawsuit against ABC News late last year. The network agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to resolve the case. Trump’s post received about 35,000 “likes” by mid-afternoon Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump would follow through with a lawsuit against ABC or its affiliated stations — or whether the FCC would seek to revoke broadcast licenses, as Trump and Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman, have suggested.
Regardless, Trump’s post was the latest in a series of attacks on the media. He also settled with CBS over allegations of deceptive editing in a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential election. This year, he has sued both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for coverage he disliked. A judge last week dismissed Trump’s suit against the Times.
No other sitting president has pursued the press in court since Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.
Kimmel’s return
Kimmel, whose following includes 10.9 million followers on X, opened his show after a six-day suspension with a highly watched monologue.
“I’ve had the opportunity to meet and spend time with comedians and talk show hosts from countries like Russia, countries in the Middle East, who told me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power, and worse than being thrown in prison,” Kimmel said in his 18-minute, at times teary-eyed opening monologue. “They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce our affiliates … to take my show off the air. That’s not legal, that’s not American, that is un-American.”
As of Wednesday morning, Kimmel’s monologue received 11 million views on YouTube and may become the most viewed video on the official YouTube account.
The FCC Chairman’s Kimmel suspension
The Kimmel episode has brought new criticism to Carr, whom Trump appointed to the FCC during his first term and elevated him to chairman when he returned to office this year.
He first criticized Kimmel on a conservative podcast last week, after the late-night host suggested that the man accused of killing Kirk was a follower of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. No clear motive has been established for the shooting.
Carr said ABC should remove Kimmel from the air and suggested the network faced regulatory punishment if it didn’t.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
Carr authored a chapter on the FCC for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a conservative government. He wants to expand the FCC’s mandate and shape what he believes should appear on broadcast airwaves, The New York Times reported Wednesday, based on interviews with 10 current and former employees at the FCC.
Carr reportedly believes in the congressional mandate to make sure broadcast serves public interest and saw Kimmel’s show as having a liberal bias in broadcast.
“If people don’t like it, they can go to Congress and change the law,” Carr said.
Critics believe Carr, like Trump, is a censor himself.
Others, such as Jason Smith, the vice chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group — which no longer carries Kimmel’s show on its ABC-affiliated stations — told People Magazine he appreciated Carr’s remarks.
“This incident highlights the critical need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action,” Smith said.
Trump’s legal action against press
It’s extremely rare for a U.S. president to take legal action against the media. However, Trump is known for his litigious nature. He has filed an estimated 4,000 lawsuits in his life, including suits against ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Dow Jones and local newspapers such as The Des Moines Register.
Trump said he wants to make it legally easier to successfully sue press organizations, which would likely require an overturn of the Supreme Court’s 1964 landmark First Amendment case.
Trump hasn’t won any of his many cases against the press at trial. However, he has succeeded in securing substantial settlements, which some critics argue can have a chilling effect on free speech.
“Even if a claim has no or little legal merit, it can be useful in terms of exhausting, intimidating, and silencing opponents,” wrote Professor Timothy Zick, author of “The First Amendment in the Trump Era.”
Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle the case over the “60 Minutes” interview. ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos settled for $15 million after falsely reporting that Trump was “found liable for rape.” Trump was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil trial.
Trump’s most expensive suit against the press to date is his libel case against Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and NewsCorp for $10 billion after the paper published an article that said Trump wrote a bawdy inscription in a book celebrating disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, which Trump denies. On Monday, the paper moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the article’s claims are true and therefore not defamatory.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
