Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr offered up a flimsy excuse for his renewed attack on Jimmy Kimmel’s broadcaster, ABC.
Within two days of President Trump, 79, calling for ABC to take Kimmel, 58, off air for the late-night host’s misunderstood monologue joke, the FCC officially challenged Disney’s broadcast licenses.
Carr, 47, who initiated license renewals at least two years before the earliest expected date, said the move was wholly unrelated to the president’s demands.
“I understand that anything that we do is now framed as ‘in the wake of’ in the headlines, and I understand that’s how it is, but we’ve got to make these decisions based on where we are in the investigations,” Carr said during an FCC open meeting in response to accusations that the license challenges were retaliatory.
Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole democrat on the FCC, slammed Carr in the same presentation for his thin justifications.
“This is clearly a pretext. I mean, give me a break,” she told reporters. “This is just another part of the pattern of harassment and retaliation in order to bend Disney to this administration’s will.”
The FCC chairman attributed the early renewals to a yearlong investigation into Disney’s DEI policies.
“It felt to us like they were playing rope a dope, and weren’t being entirely forthcoming with the production,” he said, noting that Disney had not provided documents by the agency’s due dates. “The FCC has rules on the books: You can’t discriminate based on race and gender, and there was evidence that had been submitted that that’s what Disney was doing.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Disney and ABC for comment.
Two days before the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner ended when a gunman stormed the D.C. hotel, Kimmel gave a mock-WHCA dinner monologue. During the nine-minute roast of Trump, the late-night host remarked that first lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”
The quip about the president’s advancing age and the couple’s age gap was later interpreted by Trump and other MAGA media figures as a direct call to violence. Both Melania and Donald Trump appealed directly to ABC to remove Kimmel from the air.
“When is ABC Fake News Network firing seriously unfunny Jimmy Kimmel, who incompetently presides over one of the Lowest Rated shows on Television? People are angry. It better be soon!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday.
In his return monologues, Kimmel doubled down on the joke, even pointing out the president’s hypocritical joke about his own age during a White House speech on Tuesday.
After remarking that his parents had been married for 63 years, Trump turned to his wife and said, “That’s a record we won’t be able to match, darling. I’m sorry.”
“Wait a minute. Did he just make a joke about his death?” said Kimmel. “My God. You should be fired for that.”
The FCC’s license challenge against Disney is the agency’s second attack on Kimmel in the last year. The first resulted in a six-day suspension for Kimmel.
