The Tribune

By Charlie Harper

Being outrageous has always been a big part of the political game plan for US president Donald Trump. Remember when he said, at a campaign stop in 2016 in Sioux City, Iowa, that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

Yeah, outrageous. “His audiences love it. His opponents try to use it against him — but so far, to no avail,” according to a National Public Radio report at the time. Little has changed since then.

Trump is still doing outrageous, less than one year into his second term as America’s chief executive officer. For example, he has just in the past week publicly ordered his attorney general to find or concoct enough evidence to prosecute political opponents. He has also excoriated the United Nations and withdrawn substantial US financial assistance from a body he admits offers the best chance for peace in the world.

And last week, Trump may have hit a new low. With his active approval, his administration exerted its considerable pressure on a major legacy American television network to punish a late-night talk show host. And it worked, at least for a week.

Government censorship, freedom of the press and freedom of speech all were suddenly front and centre in the American consciousness. ABC and Jimmie Kimmel were at the heart of the latest outrage.

By his own account Tuesday night as he returned to ABC’s airwaves after a six-day hiatus heavily influenced by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, late night talk show host Jimmie Kimmel has appeared over four thousand times during his nearly 23 years on American airwaves.

Tuesday’s return performance was certainly Kimmel’s most consequential, and he memorably rose to the occasion.

It might have been among the most significant moments in the history of American television, which was presciently described in 1961 by then-chairman of that same FCC Newton Minow as a “vast wasteland”. Minow said this about US TV: “When television is good, nothing—not the theatre, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

“You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.”

That was said 64 years ago.

Chances are you watch a fair amount of American television. What do you think? Is Minow’s assessment still true? It’s hard to argue that it isn’t still worth considering. But one thing that has certainly been added over the past decades is the pervasive and increasing presence of cable television’s political echo chamber, where networks have become politically aligned with national parties and ever more influential.

In the world of late-night American TV, though, irreverence is king. No one is spared the biting criticism of the sharp-tongue hosts. Kimmel has in recent years cruised along in second place, behind only the CBS show with Stephen Colbert which was cancelled soon after Colbert criticised (CBS owner) Paramount’s $16m settlement with Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview. This cancellation also coincided with the company’s application for a lucrative multi-million-dollar merger between Skydance Entertainment and Paramount, which had to be approved by the FCC.

Anyhow, Kimmel made a casually callous remark last week about the recent assassination of right-wing demagogue Charlie Kirk, who was clearly and influentially aligned with Trump, MAGA and the movement’s active recruitment of young college-aged voters.

Kimmel’s comment burst into flames on the internet and led the current FCC chairman, 46-year-old Brendan Carr, to pressure ABC into pulling Kimmel’s show off the air.

Trump had bragged about ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel’s show, calling it “Great News for America” and, of course, denigrating Kimmel’s talent and ratings. Last week Carr even suggested that ABC’s broadcast license could be revoked, which raised concerns anew over potential government overreach into the media’s independence and editorial decisions.

On Tuesday night, Kimmel began his monologue by thanking those “who supported our show, cared enough to do something about it, to make your voices heard so that mine will be heard. I will never forget it.

“And maybe most of all, I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway. I include my old pal Ted Cruz, who believe it or not said something very beautiful on my behalf.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but (Texas senator) Cruz is right,” Kimmel said on Tuesday. “He’s absolutely right. This (government censorship) affects all of us, including him.”

Kimmel quoted Cruz stating that if the government attempts to ban media, it will “end up badly for conservatives. I think it is unbelievably dangerous for the government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.’

“Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again – wins the White House, and they will silence us,” he said. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

Kimmel praised Cruz for saying what many believe. “Even though I don’t agree with many (MAGAns) on most subjects, it takes courage for them to speak out against this administration, and they did, and they deserve credit for it. And thanks to them for telling their followers that our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on television.”

Kimmel acknowledged that while his show “is not important, what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this”.

He pointed to TV personalities he has met from around the world. “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 the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American, and it is so dangerous.”

Many Americans clearly agree with Kimmel. But that won’t prevent Trump’s administration from continuing to exert and abuse their massive federal governmental power.

“They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with an obligation to operate in the public interest,” Carr told Fox News.

“We are in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons, again, including the permission structure that President Trump’s election has provided,” Carr told CNBC Thursday. “And I would simply say we’re not done yet with seeing the consequences of that.”

Kimmel cut to a clip of Trump stating, several years ago and in a different context, “If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple just like dominoes. One by one, they’ll go down.”

Kimmel paused to let the irony sink in for his viewers. “We have to speak out against this now, because Trump’s not stopping,” he said. “Trump’s gunning for our journalists, too. Over the weekend, his Foxy friend (Defence Secretary) Pete Hegseth announced a new policy that requires journalists with Pentagon press credentials to sign a pledge promising not to report information that hasn’t been explicitly authorised for release, including unclassified information. They want to pick and choose what the news is.”