ABC television and its corporate parent Disney wrongly sidelined comedian Jimmy Kimmel rather than resisting the unconstitutional demands of Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. By putting their self interest above what is right, Disney is aiding Trump’s ever greater grasping for power that does not belong to him. In trying to save themselves, they are harming all of us and making it easier for Trump to get his next target to also surrender.

At some point, it won’t be an option to resist.

ABC/Disney is not alone in yielding to Trump. CBS also did the same thing, as did a number of law firms and universities like Columbia. As for the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, they gave up their power to Trump long ago. Only some courts are resisting.

History has shown again and again tyrants often rise to power on the backs of those who put their own survival first.

Kimmel’s supposed offense was his Monday night monologue on how Trump responded to the assassination of right-wing leader Charlie Kirk. Kimmel in fact did not joke about Kirk‘s death, he called the assassination “a senseless murder”; what he did joke about was the rush by Trump and his ideological compatriot to seize on the murder to advance their ideological agenda of speech suppression.

The comedian’s sin was not making light of the death — though, to be clear, there is no distaste exception to the First Amendment — but rather pointing out that Trump is seizing on Kirk’s death as an opportunity to advance his Project 2025 agenda against the left.

Carr’s response only makes Kimmel’s point stronger, in moving to supposedly defend the legacy of a man they have called a free speech warrior by taking aim at disfavored speech. Kimmel is so far the highest-profile casualty of this campaign, but the administration and its supporters have spent the last week talking up how they will use all available levers of government power to dismantle oppositional civil society.

After an X user commented that Carr was implementing the Project 2025 playbook, the commissioner himself responded with a meme of Jack Nicholson nodding. A far cry from the 2024 Trump campaign, which tried to put distance between itself and that authoritarian framework; now, high-level Trump officials think it’s amusing to joke around about how they’re adopting it. These are the same people who, by the way, made so-called “cancel culture” a top political issue.

That this whole rigmarole involves a comedian does not make it at all funny. It’s been said that one of the most evident distinctions between a free country and one ruled by a totalitarian government is the ability to make light of its leaders. There’s a reason that a pivotal scene in the 2005 dystopian film “V for Vendetta” involves a comedian being dragged off by government thugs after mocking the absolutist leader on his show.

Kimmel has not been dragged off anywhere, but we must recognize that this is the direct and literal silencing of a popular and culturally significant critical voice by threat of government action, full stop. The cancellation of fellow late night comedian Stephen Colbert’s highly-rated show — which just won an Emmy this week — seemed clearly driven by the administration and animosity towards him, but at least there was some plausible deniability. No longer.

The news had barely begun to sink in before Trump posted on his pet social media site that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers should be next, which would leave him having felled a huge chunk of the group of people that, for good or ill, shapes a substantial portion of Americans’ understanding of politics. This is what results from giving an authoritarian an inch: he will take a mile every time. At minimum, Carr should resign and Kimmel’s show should be reinstated. We believe this still to be a free country.

Disney surrendered, on Constitution Day, of all days, weakening the Constitution for everyone. Americans and their institutions need to fight to protect their rights rather than knuckle under to Trump’s demands.

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