the enablers

Brendan Carr

Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

Threatening a network over a monologue

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Brendan Carr wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025, then ran the agency as the President’s enforcer, threatening broadcasters’ licenses over coverage and comedy the President disliked. He helped push a late-night host off the air, held up a merger until the network paid the President, and revived a “news distortion” doctrine that Reagan’s own FCC chairs call unconstitutional. His own party compared him to a mob boss.

Turning the FCC on the press

The threat that pushed a late-night show off the air

We can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Brendan Carr, on Jimmy Kimmel, September 2025

On a friendly podcast, Carr told ABC and its stations to take action over Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s killing, or “there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Within hours, two station groups with business pending before his agency pulled the show and Disney suspended Kimmel; he was back within a week after a backlash. His own party was blunt. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican chair of the Commerce Committee and normally a Carr ally, called it “right out of Goodfellas” and an unconstitutional coercion, and Sen. Rand Paul called it “absolutely inappropriate.” Trump sided with Carr over Cruz.

Sources: Cruz (R): “dangerous as hell” (Texas Tribune) · Carr’s threat, and Cruz at the Senate hearing (CNBC) · Rand Paul (R): “absolutely inappropriate” (The Hill)

The pattern, and the “Democrats did it” defense

The FCC is not formally independent.

Brendan Carr, Senate testimony, December 2025

The Kimmel threat was not a one-off. Carr threatened Comcast’s NBC stations over how they described a wrongly deported man, opened investigations into NPR and PBS, and faulted broadcasters over their coverage of the President’s strikes on Iran. Pressed on all of it at a Senate hearing, he answered that Democrats had done similar things and that the networks had made their “business decisions on their own.” Asked whether his agency was independent, he said it is “not formally” independent.

Sources: The Senate hearing: “business decisions on their own” (CNBC) · The wider pattern: Comcast, NPR, PBS (Deadline)

Turning regulatory power into leverage

The merger he held up until the network paid the President

All options remain on the table.

Brendan Carr, on the CBS 60 Minutes investigation

In his first days as chair, Carr revived a dismissed “news distortion” complaint against CBS over a 60 Minutes edit the President had sued over, just as CBS’s parent, Paramount, needed his agency to approve an $8 billion merger. The complaint tied up the deal. Paramount then settled the President’s lawsuit for $16 million and agreed to install an ombudsman over CBS News, and Carr approved the merger. A bipartisan group of former FCC chairs, including two who led the agency under Reagan, petitioned to repeal the “news distortion” doctrine, calling it constitutionally problematic and weaponized.

Sources: The CBS probe, the merger, and “all options” (Reuters) · Former FCC chairs, including Reagan’s, call it weaponized (Deadline) · The $16M settlement and the ombudsman (Washingtonian)

In the record

His FCC forced ABC's broadcast licenses into early review after the network aired criticism of him, and ABC sued, calling it a retaliatory campaign the First Amendment forbids.His FCC chairman threatened a broadcaster’s license to push a late-night host off the air, and his own party called it mafioso.