September 18, 2025
The President of the United States and his administration are very clearly is saying they are cracking down on what they consider “hate speech.” Now—there lots of opinions floating around about that and of course about the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel over something he said on his show. Here’s the thing – I’m not really interested in Jimmy Kimmel. Because this video and what the president is talking about is actually not even about him. It is so much bigger than him.
I did a whole deep dive video last night and it’s over on my Substack if you want to check that out. But for this video – as always I want to start with the facts and yes – this is another deep dive so I hope you’re sitting down. While on air force one today reporters asked President Trump about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. In his response, trump threatened to pull broadcast licenses from anyone critical of him. He said..
“I read someplace that the networks were 97 percent against me. Again, 97 percent negative, and yet I won and easily won all seven swing states. The popular vote, won everything.” “they’re 97 percent against; they give me only bad press. I mean, they’re getting a license.” “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
That statement comes as Trump told another reporter from ABC *this* on Tuesday.
Ok – those are serious statements that every single person should be paying attention to. You need to understand what the President of the United States is suggesting – if his administration follows through –and they usually do – is that his administration would restrict the speech of people and organizations that say things about trump that he doesn’t like. Now you could agree with the president or you can think he’s absolutely off the rails – that’s your choice. But if you agree with what he’s saying you need to remember once that first amendment door is kicked down – it’ll be very hard to bring that constitutional right back. And as i always say what goes around comes around. So when another administration takes over – the next president can do the same thing to a broadcaster that you like or maybe even you.
So the real question is – can the president even follow through with what he’s suggesting? And to understand that you need to understand two things. One – the 1st Amendment and two – the actual power of the FCC.
Let’s start with the 1st Amendment. The United States constitution prohibits the government from going after you for speaking negatively about the government or the president. Even if that speech is hateful, or distasteful or offensive. In fact – hate speech is absolutely protected speech according to long standing supreme court precedent. You have every right to say what you want. And so do US companies. The first amendment applies to them too. Now – there are some exceptions to the first amendment. You can’t yell fire in a theater and you can’t threaten someone with violence and you cannot incite law-lessness. But –you should also know freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences especially from private companies. ABC had every right to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air, just like CBS had every right to cancel Stephen Colbert’s show. But the real question is does the government have the right to pressure private companies to punish a private person for their speech. Generally, the supreme court says absolutely not.
And that leads me to the FCC. The federal communications commission. That is the government entity that is in charge of approving broadcast licenses. The guy in charge of that agency right now is a trump appointee named Brendan Carr – we’ve talked about him before on my channel he was the one to really encourage congress to pass the TikTok ban back in 2022 among many other things. Brendan Carr just yesterday right before Kimmel was suspended said “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” “these companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
That is a threat by the government that ABC’s license would be pulled if they didn’t do something about Kimmel. Now — while the FCC has a lot of power, the FCC does not have the power to pull a broadcaster’s license because of speech they don’t like. Right on the FCC website is specifically says “the first amendment, as well as section 326 of the communications act, prohibits the commission from censoring broadcast material and from interfering with freedom of expression in broadcasting. The constitution’s protection of free speech includes programming that may be objectionable to many viewers or listeners. Therefore, the FCC cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view. In this regard, the commission has observed that “the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views.” It goes on to say the first amendment, “protects broadcasts that criticize or ridicule established customs and institutions, including the government and its officials. The commission recognizes that, under our constitution, people must be free to say things that the majority may abhor, not only what most people may find tolerable or congenial.”
There you have it. In black and white right from the FCC website. However that doesn’t mean the right to have a license is absolute. The FCC *can pull a broadcast license for several specific reasons that are documented and adjudicated. Things that would get a broadcast license revoked include serious financial misconduct or technical misconduct or showing a pattern of not following the communications laws. But licenses can also be revoked if a broadcaster is operating in a way that harms the public interest, or broadcasting intentional news distortion or broadcasting false information leading to public harm. –by the way– this does not apply to cable channels they do not require a broadcasting license from the FCC. But broadcasters who use the airwaves do. Now – important here when we’re talking about revoking licenses – the default is the first amendment. The government cannot censor what broadcasters say and revocation of licenses for these three specific reasons is rare. The FCC rules specifically say in order for the commission to revoke a license there must be overwhelming and compelling evidence to prove a broadcaster was intentionally and knowingly and willingly distorting news or perpetrating hoaxes or broadcasting content that is meant to incite lawless action.
So if it’s *that* difficult for the FCC to pull a broadcast license and the broadcasters know that why are they even entertaining the trump administration or rolling over and doing what the president wants? Well – it’s a tale as old as time. Money. Not only does the FCC approve broadcast licenses –the FCC also approves media company mergers. So based on what we’re seeing from big media companies – it’s easier to just comply with the Trump administration than fight them on the first amendment because they want something from the FCC. They want approvals for their billion-dollar mergers.
I want to leave you with one last thing. It’s a statement from a very powerful government official over what the FCC can and can’t do. This person said –”should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the “public interest.” The person who said that was Brendan Carr back in 2019 when he was just a commissioner of the FCC.
Watch Trump on Air Force One here.
Watch Trump on Tuesday threaten a reporter here.
Read the FCC rules about licenses here. (Jump to Broadcast Programming: Basic Law and Policy)
