For two days now, the media has breathlessly repeated the false claim that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr personally ordered ABC to yank Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians were quick to spin this as some assault on free speech, with Carr supposedly carrying out a personal vendetta on behalf of President Trump.
There’s just one problem with that narrative: it never happened. In fact, Carr called it pure projection from the very people who have a history of leaning on networks and tech companies to silence conservatives.
On Dana Loesch’s podcast, Carr dismantled the left’s lies. Loesch began by playing a clip from Good Morning America, which framed Kimmel’s suspension as if Carr himself had pulled the plug. She pressed him directly: had he really called up ABC, Nexstar, and Sinclair to force them to get rid of Kimmel?
Carr’s response was blunt: “No, not at all. But it does, I guess, tell a better story for partisans on the left.”
Carr went on to explain how the media ecosystem actually works. National programmers like Disney and Comcast don’t hold FCC licenses and therefore don’t have a direct obligation to operate in the public interest. That responsibility falls on local broadcasters, which are licensed by the FCC and entrusted with serving their communities. For years, however, the big national players used their clout to dictate what local stations aired—forcing Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and other late-night propagandists into markets that weren’t interested.
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But according to Carr, what happened with Kimmel was a long-overdue correction. “Local TV stations said, ‘I don’t want to run this Kimmel stuff and we’re going to preempt it.’ And that’s a really important moment of local TV stations standing up for their viewers and pushing back against Comcast and Disney,” he explained.
Loesch agreed, pointing out that companies like Sinclair weren’t simply being partisan but making a decision based on facts. “That sounds like a Kimmel problem, not a Brendan Carr problem,” she said.
Carr tied the shift back to President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, which shattered the assumption that Americans had to accept whatever New York and Hollywood deemed “appropriate” or “funny.” The ratings, he noted, have confirmed it. “How popular is Kimmel in these local markets?" he asked "I’ve seen these bar charts recently and it’s just like an absolute nosedive in terms of ratings. We know from Colbert that Paramount indicated that he was losing them $50 million a year.”
This, Carr argued, is the real story: market forces and local broadcasters finally responding to their viewers, not some shadowy government plot. Still, Democrats are demanding his resignation, with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and others accusing Carr of “a corrupt abuse of power.”
Carr laughed off the attacks. “That sounds kind of insurrectionary to me," he said. "President Trump won. President Trump designated me as chair, I’m the chairman. You can call me whatever names you want, I really don’t care.”
The larger issue, he stressed, is reinvigorating the public interest standard: “If you want to have a podcast, if you want to have a cable show—have at it. Total free market. But if you’re going to be on broadcast TV, that’s simply different.”
Loesch closed by highlighting the glaring hypocrisy: Democrats crying “censorship” now were the same ones leaning on tech companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story or silence conservative voices online. Carr agreed, pointing out that under Biden’s FCC, Fox’s local broadcast license was deliberately held up for over 18 months “all the way through the election” without a word of protest from the same people now feigning outrage.
🚨🚨FCC Commissioner @BrendanCarrFCC joined @DLoesch to RESPOND to reports that he personally ordered Jimmy Kimmel to be suspended, the truth as to why it happened, addresses calls from House Democrats to RESIGN & much more. #DanaRadio
— The Dana Show (@DanaLoeschRadio) September 18, 2025
Podcast: https://t.co/m6DlHDgYKV pic.twitter.com/4FP2PdsiS6
In the end, Carr made one thing abundantly clear: Kimmel’s suspension was not about the FCC twisting arms. It was about local broadcasters finally asserting their right to serve their communities instead of blindly airing content dictated by Hollywood elites.
Now, maybe the real discussion should be how the left weaponized the FCC under Joe Biden.
The left’s latest hoax just imploded—falsely claiming government censorship when it was actually market forces and fed-up viewers finally rejecting Kimmel’s failing propaganda. While the likes of CNN and MSNBC spin fairy tales, PJ Media delivers the real story behind their deceptions. Stand with independent conservative media that refuses to bow to woke pressure—become a PJ Media VIP member today with code FIGHT for 60% off. Support truth over lies.
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