Donald Trump Immediately Returns To Threatening Disney Over Jimmy Kimmel’s Speech
from the censorial-asshat dept
We’ve repeated over and over again that anyone who believes Donald Trump’s claims of supporting free speech is either a brainwashed cultist or the dumbest person alive. And now, in his doddering old age, he’s becoming ever more brazen and belligerent in his attacks on speech. He’s not even trying to put forth a veneer of legitimacy anymore.
Last week, his FCC chair, Brendan Carr, went on a MAGA influencer’s podcast and clearly and obviously threatened both Disney and local ABC affiliates to punish Jimmy Kimmel for his speech. The affiliates (many of whom are trying to get FCC approval for consolidation mergers) got the message and pre-empted their showing of Kimmel’s show, leading Disney to temporarily suspend the show. After the public started canceling their Disney+ accounts in droves, Disney flipped its position and allowed Kimmel to come back last night (with a bang).
And, now facing bipartisan pressure for acting like a censorial bitch, Brendan Carr is trying to doublespeak his way out of what he said last week, insisting that of course he wasn’t abusing his power to punish Kimmel’s speech, a claim that I’m pretty sure exactly no one (including Brendan Carr) believes.
But, even if we wanted to take Carr at his word, his boss, Donald Trump, is not helping matters. Just as Kimmel was about to go back on the air, he posted this to his Unsocial Liars Truth Social site:
That is… [checks notes… checks notes again because surely that can’t be… well… okay] the President of these United States saying:
I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his “talent” was never there. Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE. He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers! Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad Ratings.
I mean, what do you even say anymore other than the man is the most censorial, anti-free speech President to hold the office in at least a century and probably more?
First, he’s admitting that the White House talked to Disney about Kimmel’s show, which is, if I remember correctly from all the MAGA whining during the Murthy v. Missouri case, absolutely verboten under the First Amendment.
Second, if it’s true that he had no audience and no talent, then… why would the FCC and Trump need to weigh in at all? It’s obvious he does have an audience and talent given that he has over 20 million subscribers on YouTube and the video from last night is over 15 million views in less than a day as I write this and will surely pass 20 million before too long.
Third, more seriously, the claim that Trump is going to sue over something wholly unrelated to what Carr was threatening an investigation over shows that this has nothing to do with any particular comment or with Kimmel’s ratings or popularity. It is, clearly, our most thin-skinned, can’t-take-a-joke, whiny, insecure, pathetic excuse of a President demanding that the guy making fun of him be silenced.
It’s not worth going into the details but, no, a late night TV host comic making jokes about the President is not, in any way, an “illegal campaign contribution.” That’s not how any of this works.
As for the $16 million payout for the “last time I went after them” that should reveal what bullshit all this is. Trump filed a very, very questionable defamation lawsuit against ABC over a minor technical misstatement by George Stephanopoulos, which the company caved on and decided to pay a settlement fee on (just like a few other media and tech companies in the last year) in the hopes of staying in Trump’s good graces.
But as we’ve said over and over again, when you appease bullies, they don’t go away. You just are asking for more bullying and more demands. Disney/ABC should have known that from the start, but here we are. Trump is basically demanding a payout as punishment because Jimmy Kimmel makes fun of him.
If Disney’s Bob Iger had any principles or any backbone at all, he’d do exactly what John Oliver told him to do earlier this week. Go back to the White House with “Fuck you, make me.”
Filed Under: 1st amendment, brendan carr, censorship, donald trump, free speech, jimmy kimmel, threats
Companies: abc, disney
Comments on “Donald Trump Immediately Returns To Threatening Disney Over Jimmy Kimmel’s Speech”
People always quote a single part of the following poem, but for once, I’m going to quote Rudyard Kipling’s “Danegeld” in its entirety:
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From a children’s book:
Or Bob Marley and the Wailers:
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From the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff. I had to search for that one because it’s not widely known despite having been published just 40 years ago.
Talking about backbones is cheap
Bob Iger has no legal obligation to his backbone. He does have a legal obligation to Disney’s shareholders to act in their best monetary interest. Pissing Trump off is against their monetary interest. Just look at the ongoing price tag of Harvard’s “Fuck you, make me”.
The backbone that is actually required is that of the American consumers. When they say “Fuck you, make me” to Eiger’s “enjoy how I kiss Trump’s ass”, then it becomes his legal obligation to stop kissing Trump’s ass in order to save Disney’s bottom line.
Iger is legally required to reflect the lack of backbone of the average Disney consumer. That is an even worse position than being representative of the average Harvard patron’s backbone.
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Letting Trump dictate their programming is also against the shareholders’ interest. A command economy in general is against shareholder interests.
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Kimmel’s suspension got a fair number of conservative/right-leaning media figures—including Joe Rogan, of all people!—pissed off at Trump and the FCC for censoring Kimmel, and plenty of people cancelled their subscriptions to Disney Plus and Hulu, and that’s on top of Disney Adults™ saying they would (and potentially did) cancel their trips to Disney’s theme parks.
If I was a Disney shareholder, I’d be pissed as hell that Disney bent the knee to a would-be king at the cost of both its integrity and a shitload of money. That calculus is part of the reason Kimmel is back on the air: Disney had more to lose by pissing off the general public than it did by pissing off the enemies of free speech.
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I hadn’t seen that Rogan finally reacted. Guess he found his nuts after all.
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Now if only he’d find a brain, too.. I do know that’s asking too much.
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Let’s not go crazy go here.
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As the saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again.
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Apropos:
Disney investors demand details into company’s Jimmy Kimmel suspension
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/25/disney-investors-jimmy-kimmel-suspension-abc
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Bob Iger has no legal obligation to his backbone. He does have a legal obligation to Disney’s shareholders to act in their best monetary interest. Pissing Trump off is against their monetary interest. Just look at the ongoing price tag of Harvard’s “Fuck you, make me”.
And how’s that appeasement been working out for them?
‘Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers!
They caved once and paid out sixteen million in protection money, they caved again and suffered a stadium-sized PR black-eye over Kimmel with people dropping subscriptions in droves, and now Trump is openly talking about extorting them again for even more money.
Standing up to Trump absolutely is in the company’s best financial interest because it turns out that appeasement is a losing strategy and just means paying out again, and again, and again in perpetuity.
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It’s gotten their shareholders to take steps towards filing a lawsuit.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. In that situation, might as well do the right thing and tell Trump, “Fuck you. Make me.”
- Scott Sharkey, 2017
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Maga: WE LOVE SHIT! Trump 2028! [vomits from stink]
Why people have suddenly unsubscribed once Jimmy Kimmel was fired if the show was already unpopular?
Please, Donald, explain that to me because I don’t have your brain. (well, luckily).
Re: Trump and his fans are in systematic denial about the extent of their opposition
I’d say part of the reason why Trump and people like him talk about Kimmel failing low ratings and a failing show – aside from their usual bullshitting habits – is that right-wingers in general have, for a long time, systematically deluded themselves about how many or how few real opponents they have.
They seem to seriously believe that the opposition to them consists only of a few elite/establishments types, a somewhat larger number of people paid by these elite/establishments types, and another somewhat larger group of people duped by these elite/establishments types, and that everyone else supports them and their politics.
Therefore, the idea that someone like Jimmy Kimmel might really have a successful show makes them have strong Does Not Compute reactions.
On an only somewhat related matter, that’s probably also part of the reason why they keep going on and on about “election fraud”. Yes, partly it’s their usual lying-for-political-gain thing, but partly it’s because they can’t imagine that there might really be enough people opposed to them and their politics for them to lose any election fair and square.
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My mother is very firmly in the fox news bubble. This last weekend she was going on about election fraud and how mail on ballots are a significant threat to election integrity. When I mentioned that they want to strip overseas voters of their right to vote l, she couldn’t believe that it could possibly be because overseas voters overwhelmingly vote democratic and this would favor Republicans. General learning point is that one we’ll ingrained misconception can be used to justify a ton of objectively bad actions.
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Kimmel shouldn’t be on the air. He won’t be soon for purely economic reasons.
And the FCC DOES have the legal ability to regulate speech that is carried over the airways. It simply does, by law, and the 1A doesn’t apply cuz companies agree to it when they license the spectrum. I don’t especially like it, but it’s true.
And Kimmel lied, and never apologized for lying.
Meanwhile you keep on ignoring (and lying about) that even Google admitted that the Biden administration pressured them to censor users, who had not violated their TOS, which is very much illegal unlike the FCC.
And you just lie and downplay what happened with youtube and all the other social media channels, constantly.
You’re a hypocrite, Mike. And yeah, you filter replies.
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We’ll see. But he wasn’t taken off the air for economic reasons, as you claimed. No one with half a brain would think that’s what happened. If it was for economic reasons (1) it would not have come hours after the head of the FCC threatened them (2) minutes before the day’s show was set to record and (3) they wouldn’t have brought him back less than a week later.
All of those suggest anyone who claims it was for economic reasons is full of shit.
This is just false and incredibly stupid. It shows you’re an ignorant fool. We know you’re an engineer and have literally zero knowledge or experience with this, but let’s go to the source: the FCC itself says you’re full of shit:
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fcc-and-speech
I quote:
The FCC has very limited ability to regulate broadcast spectrum, so long as it is not about regulating the speech on those networks with very limited exceptions, such as obscenities.
You disagreeing with a late night comic is NOT that.
You and your fellow MAGA morons keep saying this and it’s so blatantly obviously false, it just makes you look even more stupid than you are. He did not lie. He said that MAGA idiots like yourself were trying to do anything they could to claim that the shooter wasn’t one of them and to use the shooting to achieve other goals. Both of those claims are true.
And of course, your idiot President has now made it clear that he wants to cancel Kimmel not for the Kirk comments anyway, so again, your own cult leader is out there making you look like a fool, even as your tongue is so far up his ass.
It takes time to respond to all the bullshit that you guys put out. I’ll have a story on that soon. And, of course, it will show that you are lying again. So is Jim Jordan who appears to not be able to read and got played by Google. You guys are so easy to play. Hint: Google explicitly said that it rejected Biden’s requests, so no, they did not censor users who had not violated their TOS. The letter says the exact opposite.
Why does it not surprise me that you are spewing nonsense some MAGA idiot told you rather than reading the actual letter?
I do not lie. That you are too mentally slow to keep up with reality is on you.
Your comment is right fucking here, dipshit. The fact that you keep getting caught in the spam filter while most others don’t… is maybe on you?
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I get held up by the moderation/spam filters on an occasional basis, but I don’t whine about it because my comments tend to go through after a relatively brief wait. If you’re mad about being caught by the spamfilters, maybe consider why you’re being flagged enough to get filtered.
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it catches my ip address
ABC needs to sue Trump for $17 million. Sue him personally for defamation and the administration for violating their first amendment rights. Who cares if they win? Just tie up the orange scumbag with tons of court cases.
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Would that they could, but the stupid heads in SCOTUS made the Orange Felon immune for anything he does while in the Oval Office, remember?
something weird about it
Kimmel’s speech didnt even seem so harmful to Trump et al. There have been far worse things said about Trump, with no repercussions at all. weird
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That’s one of the reasons there was such a blowup over Kimmel’s suspension in the first place: His jokes about MAGA World’s race to paint the shooter as a leftist when evidence suggests he was a right-winger were so anodyne that they mostly passed without anyone noticing until Trump got pissy about it and Carr made his mob boss threat to Disney/ABC. Kimmel didn’t even say anything about Charlie Kirk, at least in the sense that he was mocking Kirk’s death.
Trump believed Disney/ABC bending the knee once for $16mil meant he could bully them into giving in to his demands again. He found out that Disney has higher concerns that keeping that crybully happy. He’s mad because he thought he could take out the late night TV hosts who mock him and now he’s learning that no, he’s not going to be doing that without a bunch of people putting up a fight. Even Ted Cruz was on Kimmel’s side, and Cruz kissed Trump’s ass even after Trump mocked Cruz’s wife. That’s how you know Trump overstepped: Kimmel’s enemies were willing to defend him.
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I think at least some of them have realized this whole thousand-year-reich thing probably isn’t going to work out for them and odds are pretty good there’s going to be another Democrat in office sooner rather than later and maaaaaaybe this whole unlimited executive power thing isn’t such a good idea after all.
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Yes, and that seems an accurate assessment. Following some bullying, they did give in to his demands again.
Evidently it was not entirely permanent. Kimmel is back on some affilliate stations. However, it did work, and perhaps even provided a needed distraction from the Epstein files.
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I don’t think it worked at all. Disney suffered a massive PR backlash and backtracked within a few days; they’re not likely to take that risk again the next time Carr decides to threaten them, and other networks might think twice about it too. There’s really no metric by which this was a victory for Trump.
The Epstein files are important. So is the invasion of Chicago. So is the politicization of the DOJ. So are the fascistic threats against free speech and corporate America’s capitulation to same. All of these things are important; calling any one of them a “distraction” from the others trivializes it.
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It worked like a champ. Disney folded up like a wet paper sack in a windstorm. The problem was that they got some push-back, in fact more than they had allowed for, and determined to fold again as though the eye had passed over and the wind was now blowing the other way.
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Yes, it worked like a champ; the only problem is that it almost immediately backfired. You are very intelligent.
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ABC had already folded once. Trump made them for a mark.
The emperor has lost his mind
Trump is angry because he is going senile.
“President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was the victim of “three very sinister events” during his time at the United Nations on Tuesday and that the Secret Service will be looking into the issues.”
And, here’s what happens when people start becoming senile…
“Senility, often associated with dementia, can lead to symptoms like paranoia, where individuals may feel suspicious or fearful of others without justification. This occurs due to cognitive decline affecting their perception and understanding of reality.”
The first “sinister” event? The escalator stopped working for a short time.
Stop the presses, Trump’s escalator stopped working. It’s massive sabotage by the Evil Democrats!!!! Damned woke elevators!!! Biden did it!!!
The second “sinister” event? His teleprompter when dark. Oh NOes!!! What will he ever do? Oh, wait, the secret service was in charge of that. Obama did it, I’m sure!!!
The third “sinister” event? “Third, Trump said that the sound was off at the U.N. as he spoke and that people could only hear his remarks if they had interpreters speaking into earpieces.”
Well, to be fair, the third one was probably intentional…
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“I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust coincidences.” (Elim Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, S2E5 “Cardassians”)
To give a single iota of fairness to Trump, any one of the events he mentioned would be unfortunate, but all three occuring on the same day as Trump’s visit to the UN, and all three events appearing to have affected only Trump, suggests that maybe he has a point about sabotage. Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; thrice is a pattern.
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Well, I’m sure he could order an investigation into it. Oh wait, he’s ready to fire more people at the FBI. “If you let the government shut down, I’ll shoot myself in the foot!!”
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My first guess would be it has something to do with his surrounding himself with incompetents.
I find it very easy to believe that his team fucked up and he’s lashing out at everybody else for it.
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it was a pattern. a pattern of incompetence by a person who has surrounded himself with sycophants instead of competent people.
it’s only going to get worse for him, his admin, and the country because he is in cognitive decline. He has to rely on others for more and more cover to hide his lies and lack of ability to lead.
I don’t want any Techdirt people targeted, but this is the kind of article I would try to post to Lies Social or Shitter, if I had accounts there. On the idea that maybe just a couple of people would read it and finally understand that Donald Trump and the Republican party have always, always hated free speech.
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Defend to the death
I don’t like what Kimmel said, but I will defend to the death his right to say it.
However, I doubt my post will remain visible here for long because some Leftwing zealot with the ability to hide my comment will do just that. Do you see the hypocrisy?
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There is no hypocrisy. You get flagged because of your reputation as a cop apologist who will excuse any malfeasance by the police, up to and including the murder of an unarmed man. Your comment still showed up and it will still be readable after it gets flagged; that isn’t censorship, no matter how much you want to be a victim.
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Re: Re: You are not the community!
Charley Kirk was killed because someone didn’t like his opinion. Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air because someone didn’t like what he said. I tried to humanize police officers like my son, daughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law and you didn’t like that, so you did your best to make sure those posts weren’t read. I’m sure mine’s not the only opinion you’ve tried to suppress. I see the hypocrisy and intolerance in the fact that this blog allows YOU to flag or hide comments that YOU don’t like. Maybe this blog would be more popular if it actually allowed unfettered free speech.
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Three things.
Your opinion isn’t suppressed, so much as it’s been flagged to tell people “the community here thinks this post isn’t worth reading”. Everyone has the option to click a link and read it anyway. No one is obligated to be your audience, and you lack the power needed to force people into being your audience/taking you seriously. All of that applies to everyone here—including me.
You can do the same thing. One flag, even from one of the most prolific commenters on this site, isn’t going to hide your post any more than one flag from you is going to hide my posts. A post being hidden requires multiple flags, and I only have but one flag to give, so acting like I’m the only person who decides if a post gets hidden is giving me far too much credit.
It kind of already does. How many blogs can you name that still allow people to comment anonymously without an account of any kind? Even comments that get flagged still have to actually show up in the comments section to get flagged, and their being flagged doesn’t actually delete them. You can post your copaganda all you want here; if you get flagged, maybe try doing a better job of reading the room instead of whining about how nobody takes you seriously.
Unfortunately, the Orange Felon does have something to hold over Disney’s head: the pending acquisition of the NFL Network by ESPN:
And there it is. Just like Paramount/CBS wanting to be bought by Skydance, and we all know how that turned out. I’m not the only one to point this out:
Just like Frito Pendejo, Disney likes money.
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Disney likes money and after they suspended Kimmel they lost the kind of money that makes even a company their size nervous.
You’re probably right that they’ll be looking for a chance to make a deal with Trump so they can get their merger approved. But it won’t be this. At least not before Kimmel’s contract is up like Paramount did with Colbert.